UK and EU users who want to access all those NSFW Stellar Blade mods on Nexus will soon have a tougher time of it, as the platform moves to tighten up how it handles access to adult content on its service. The headline item? Some form of age verification is coming.
In a news post published earlier today, Nexus Mods content manager SlugGirl informed users that the demands of the UK's Online Safety Act and the EU's Digital Services Act around access to adult content would soon impact the world's largest modding site.
The biggest change soon to hit the service is age verification. At some point in the relatively near future, Nexus will implement an as-yet-undetermined age-verification system "for the majority of adult content hosted on the site" for users in the UK and EU.
It says it's currently investigating different means of doing this, but clearly isn't ready to commit to any method in particular just yet. When I reached out to the service to ask which options it was looking at, I didn't get any specifics in response, though was reassured that the platform is "confident we can strike a solid balance between user safety and accessibility."
If you're not in the UK or EU, you won't be subject to the age-verification system, unless your region happens to pass a similar law requiring it.
Ofcom, the UK regulator, has previously said that age checks in the form of a 'Yes I am over 18' button prompt aren't sufficient to meet the requirements of the Online Safety Act, so we can probably expect something slightly more onerous than that once Nexus irons out the kinks in its plan, possibly involving official ID like your driving licence or passport (though I stress that's just me speculating about forms the scheme could take).
What counts as adult content, you ask? Great question. Another change Nexus is making on the back of all this pertains to its mod categorisation and tagging system, which will let users see or hide particular kinds of adult content depending on their tags.
The new, revised tags for adult content, which will be applied to mods by Nexus staff and moderators, are:
- Pornographic
- Extreme Violence
- Harmful substances
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Depression
- Body stigma
- Eating disorders
- Swearing or Profanity
- Sexualised
In addition, Nexus is introducing "automated detection for Child Sexual Abuse Material. Any content of this nature will be immediately removed, and the user responsible will be banned and reported to the National Crime Agency," a UK law-enforcement body.
That the new system would apply to pornographic content is no surprise, nor is it particularly shocking that it will limit access to material surrounding suicide and self-harm, but "extreme violence" feels like a very blurry area considering the nature of most videogames. Would any and all mods for Cyberpunk 2077, which lets you dismember enemies and even force them to commit suicide, be shuffled into an adult category by default? Nexus hasn't yet said, though I've reached out to ask and will update this piece if I hear back.
Nexus says these changes will hit "in the coming weeks and months," and I'll be very curious to see how they're received and how smoothly the whole process goes. In the UK, the Online Safety Act has come under intense criticism for violating privacy and security in order to prioritise a sometimes-nebulous concern for children's online safety, while some have deemed the provisions of the Digital Services Act as unsuitably rigid for the modern internet. Nevertheless, they're here and we have to deal with them. Unless you're not in the UK or EU, anyway.
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