The EU KIDS Act Must Protect Young Players and Their Friendships

Protecting young gamers means reducing abuse, unwanted contact and pressure to stay online. It also means preserving safe ways to meet people, play together and belong.

The European Commission’s EU KIDS Act proposal, published on 17 September 2026, brings those goals into focus. It proposes age restrictions and stronger safeguards across services children use, including social media, video platforms and online games. It is a proposal, not a law that took effect today. The European Parliament and Council still have to negotiate and agree the final text. European Commission announcement

At PingCore, we want safer gaming communities. We also want the debate to recognise what young people build inside them: friendships, shared projects and places where someone notices when they turn up.

The outcome will depend on how well the rules protect both safety and participation.

What the proposal would change

The Commission proposes a staged approach to social media access:

• Under 13: No social media accounts, with a limited route to specially designed child-friendly video services through a parent or guardian’s account.

• Ages 13 and 14: Supervised mini accounts with restricted features and a maximum of one hour’s use per day.

• From 15: Independent social media accounts, with safeguards continuing for minors.

Those are proposed changes, rather than new account restrictions already operating across Europe. Commission summary of the age rules

The broader measures would tackle designs that encourage excessive use, unsolicited contact from strangers and unsafe defaults. They include controls over recommendations, easier blocking and muting, and protections against notifications that interrupt sleep. Online games sit within this wider safety agenda. Commission press release

The distinction matters: the Commission describes the account age rules as applying to social networking and video-sharing services with risky features. The proposal should not be read as a blanket ban on under-15s playing games, or a universal one-hour limit on gameplay. How particular services and features are classified will matter. Official KIDS Act Q&A

Gaming friendships deserve a place in the debate

A young player might log in to finish a shared build, practise with a teammate or spend time with a friend who moved away. The game gives the conversation somewhere to happen.

Pew Research Center’s 2024 report found that 72% of US teenagers who play games cited spending time with others as a reason for playing. Almost half, 47%, had made an online friend through a game. The same research found that 41% had been called an offensive name while playing, and 41% said gaming had hurt their sleep. These findings concern US teenagers aged 13–17, surveyed in 2023, rather than children across the EU. Pew Research Center

Both experiences deserve weight. Harassment can drive someone out of a community. A poorly designed restriction can separate them from one.

Better safety can help more children take part. The challenge is to reduce harmful encounters while preserving opportunities to form friendships, including friendships with people they have yet to meet.

Discord: protect the group as well as the individual

Discord combines small, invitation-only spaces with large public communities. Its text and voice channels let players arrange sessions and keep talking between games. Discord also offers parental tools through Family Center, including controls over direct messages and visibility into a teenager’s activity, without showing parents the contents of messages. Discord’s parent and educator guide

That variety matters. Six friends talking during a co-op session create a different situation from a public server where thousands of strangers can interact.

Stronger contact controls could reduce unwanted approaches. Clearer permissions could help families understand who can join a conversation. Those improvements would support the social value of the platform.

The risk is that cumbersome approval processes or broad access restrictions make an established friendship group difficult to maintain. For a studio that puts every announcement, support answer and community event inside Discord, access changes could also leave some players outside the conversation.

Our preference is for proportionate safeguards around membership, introductions and contact. An invitation-only group still needs reporting and moderation. Its smaller size alone does not make it safe.

Discord’s precise treatment under the eventual rules should follow the legal definitions and relevant features. A claim that the proposal simply “bans Discord for children” would skip that work.

Twitch: shared events need thoughtful limits

Twitch gives gaming communities a live meeting place. A tournament, speedrun or developer stream lets viewers experience something together. Twitch’s own creator guidance describes community game sessions, polls and rewards, including Drops that can depend on watch time. Twitch Creator Camp

That creates a useful distinction for the safety debate. Watching a chosen event with friends has social value. Feeling obliged to keep a stream running to earn a reward creates a different incentive.

Safer contact settings, effective chat moderation and less pressure to remain online could improve the experience for younger viewers. Studios should examine whether their own campaigns encourage healthy participation or simply longer viewing.

Time limits also involve a trade-off. If the proposed mini-account limit applies to a young viewer’s access, an event could run longer than their allowance. Replays and concise highlights would help preserve access to the game’s wider culture, although they cannot reproduce the experience of watching live with friends.

Watching, chatting and broadcasting deserve separate consideration. Each exposes a young person to different risks.

YouTube: preserve learning and discovery

YouTube can be a gaming reference library: a beginner’s guide, an explanation of a difficult mechanic or a tutorial that helps someone build their first level.

YouTube already distinguishes between viewing and participation. Its supervised accounts for younger children restrict features including live chat, channel creation and video uploads. Those existing arrangements should not be assumed to satisfy the proposed EU rules automatically. YouTube’s supervised account guidance

The opportunity is to give young players more control over what they watch and clearer stopping points. A player who chooses a ten-minute guide should be able to watch it without being pulled into an unplanned evening of recommendations.

The risk is that access controls also obstruct useful material or make age-appropriate creative participation harder as children grow. A guide to an accessible game can still require technical detail; content suitable for younger viewers does not have to be simplistic.

For studios, useful responses include maintaining written guides on their own websites and publishing tutorials that work as complete, focused lessons. Help should remain easy to find when a platform changes its account rules.

X: keep game information accessible

For young gamers who use X, the platform can connect them to developers, esports teams and discussions about a favourite game. X offers both a recommendation-led For You timeline and a Following timeline based on accounts the user has chosen. X’s timeline guidance

Safer recommendations and stronger contact controls could improve that experience. Following a studio for patch news should remain a deliberate choice, with clear control over wider exposure.

The practical risk for developers is dependence on one channel. If a young player loses access to an account, they may also lose their usual route to updates or community events.

Studios can address that now by keeping patch notes, service updates and essential support on accessible websites and inside their games. Social platforms can help distribute that information while players retain another reliable route to it.

Game studios have responsibilities inside the game too

This debate reaches beyond the apps surrounding a game. Developers choose how players meet, who can message them, what happens after a report and whether progression pressures them to return every day.

A useful review starts with an ordinary session. Can a young player find an appropriate group, understand who is present, control contact and leave comfortably? Can they report a problem without abandoning the game to create another social account?

For multiplayer teams, our priorities would be:

• Make contact deliberate. Give players clear control over invitations, private messages and who can join their group.

• Make reports actionable. Give moderators the context they need, define who responds and explain what happens next.

• Respect time away. Review rewards and progression systems for pressure to play longer or return when someone needs a break.

• Keep essential services accessible. Let players read help, check service status and report problems through appropriate channels beyond social media.

These are product priorities, rather than a claim that every feature will face the same legal requirement.

For indie studios, shared standards and affordable tools could make safer design easier. Unclear definitions, repeated integration work and expensive verification could consume time a small team needs for development. The final framework should give smaller studios a practical route to meeting their responsibilities.

Age checks must protect privacy and access

The Commission proposes certified age verification that can confirm an age threshold without disclosing the person’s identity to the platform. Its Q&A also describes a free verification route in each member state, including for people without digital ID. Official explanation of age verification

That is a valuable design goal. The implementation must also work when a legitimate user fails a check, a family shares devices or a guardian struggles with the setup.

Confusing checks could exclude eligible players or encourage some families to seek less accountable alternatives. Those are risks to test and address, rather than inevitable outcomes.

A successful system needs understandable instructions, accessible support and a way to correct mistakes. Young people should also have a voice in judging whether those systems work.

PingCore’s view

The EU KIDS Act creates an opportunity to make the places around games more welcoming and trustworthy. Safer defaults and meaningful accountability deserve support. So does careful scrutiny of restrictions that could interrupt healthy friendships or limit access to useful communities.

For those of us working in game infrastructure, the purpose of a reliable session is the experience people share inside it. Reliable hosting supports that experience; studios and community teams also need thoughtful permissions, moderation and support.

We would judge the outcome by whether young players face less harassment, can get help when they need it and can still build meaningful connections through play.

A young person should be able to leave a game safely, return to familiar friends and feel welcome when they do.