Developers
If you’re going to ask your player base to verify themselves - you better pick a provider that is designed for gamers.
PlaySafe ID is the only reusable digital identity provider that can keep you compliant, keep players anonymous, and provide them with added value - the ability to play without cheaters or bad-actors.
The single solution for:
Compliance
PlaySafe ID is a reusable digital identity that qualifies to the highest standards of highly effective age assurance mandated by Ofcom.
One simple integration solves your biggest legislative and compliance headaches.
Child safety
PlaySafe ID is the only solution in the world that can keep predators and bad-actors out of your game and away from children.
Give parents the peace of mind they want - that their children are safe in your game and predators are kept out for good.
Fair play for all
For the first time ever, you can finally keep cheaters, hackers, and botters out, and give your players the experience that they’ve been begging for.
PlaySafe ID is more than a tick-box for your compliance needs. We ensure your game is fair and fun for everyone.
The Guide: Online Safety Act & Ofcom
We’ve studied the all of the actual legislation from the UK Gov and all of Ofcom’s statements to produce a simple guide for game developers. Everything you need to know about the Online Safety Act and Ofcom’s regulatory framework.
Your solution to the Online Safety Act, Ofcom, and child safety
PlaySafe ID is a reusable digital identity service which complies with the highest accuracy to Ofcom’s four criteria (technical accuracy, reliability, robust, and fair). Our process provides the least friction and the most value to your users, all whilst ensuring your compliance to the highest-degree.
Additionally, we’re much more than just verification for you and for gamers. A PlaySafe ID is a pass to gaming where cheaters, hackers, bots, and child-predators are kept out of your game. For the first time ever, you can provide not only the most compliant game, but the safest and most fair.
The best Highly Effective Age Assurance solution for games
The legislation and regulatory framework require you to implement highly effective age assurance. The criteria for this include: Accuracy, reliability, robust, and fair. There are also “potentially accepted” methods of HEAA, but they have to meet this criteria.
The only solution that works for over-18s and under-18s, and that’s specifically designed for gamers, and meets all 4 of these regulatorily mandated criteria is PlaySafe ID.
We run a zero-knowledge proof with OnFido with the highest accuracy, reliability, robustness, and fairness. We also have this setup to keep a data seperation and protect user info, whilst ensuring a cross-ecosystem usability for users (the legislation also compels interoperability where possible).
Why work with PlaySafe ID? Why not just do this myself?
Price: We pay the KYC bill for users.
Less liability: We’re the data controller for all PII. You don’t have to make any updates or changes regarding your data controller or liability.
Easiest integration: Just two endpoints are faster and easier than integrating the full SDK from anyone else.
Value to the player: If you just verify users, you will upset your playerbase. It’s friction without benefit. PlaySafe ID also enables you to offer PlaySafe Protected matchmaking, where we keep cheaters, hackers, bots, and anyone inappropriate to kids out of games. Much happier players.
So you could integrate a KYC provider and do this yourself if you want it to be more expensive, slower, have more liability and impact for your data, DPO, and terms, and if you want to upset your players without any benefit. Or, you could integrate PlaySafe ID and get started for free, quickly, with less liability and risk, and provide added value to your players: playing your game with cheaters kept out and predators banned for life.
Fair play and safe play for all your users
PlaySafe ID is an anonymous & random ID assigned to a user once they have verified their identity through our zero-knowledge KYC and age estimation checks. Additionally, anyone caught cheating, hacking, botting, or grooming children in any game has their PlaySafe ID marked.
By working with PlaySafe ID, you not only solve your compliance requirements, but you also provide an environment for the majority of players who want a fair, fun, and safe gaming experience free of cheaters, hackers, bots, and bad-actors.
How does PlaySafe work?
Simply integrate our standard SSO for users to connect their PlaySafe ID, then integrate two simple endpoints.
When the user connects their PlaySafe ID or logs back in, we return their PSID to you. You then use this to call our API to get the status of their ID and their age, or to post a violation to us.
It’s that simple to be compliant, and to provide the most fair, fun, and safe environment to your players in the whole of gaming.
Additionally, we only return their age-band to you (no date of birth or any PII). This means that you can be compliant whilst not having any additional data, privacy, GDPR, e-privacy directive, or any other extra headaches.
FAQs
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Your PlaySafe ID is an anonymous and unique ID that is generated when you prove you’re a real person. It’s your key to play in PlaySafe protected matchmaking across games and services where you’ll only play with and against other real people who haven’t been caught cheating, hacking, botting, or being inappropriate to children.
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You unlock PlaySafe Protected matchmaking by connecting your PlaySafe ID to a game. You can only play here if you have a valid PlaySafe ID without any active penalties. This means that you will only play with real people who haven’t been caught cheating/hacking across any PlaySafe Protected game.
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Anyone with a photo ID: Simply create an account, take a picture of a document and take a selfie. We then get notified by OnFido if the verification was successful, then we generate your random and anonymous PlaySafe ID. We don’t see or store any of your data.
Under 18s without a document/ID: Your parent will need to create an account with the steps above, and then they can add you as an under-18 user.
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PlaySafe ID uses a process known as “a zero-knowledge proof”. This means that we get to know that you’re real and genuine, but we don’t have to see or store any of your personal info.
We have partnered with OnFido who are giants in the KYC, identity, and verification industry. They are used by huge names across finance, insurance, and other big industries.
You verify your identity on the PlaySafe ID platform, powered by OnFido. We get told if the verification was successful by OnFido, and if it is, we generate a random and anonymous PlaySafe ID. It is this ID that is used with games and services.
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We have two very simple rules:
Don’t use software or hardware to gain an unfair advantage over other players (cheat, hack, bot, script, etc).
Don’t groom or be sexual towards children.
We don’t blacklist based on toxicity or behaviour; that’s at the discretion of the game to handle as they see fit. We ultimately just care about cheating and child safety.
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Cheating:
It depends based on the strength of the info we receive. Bans range from a few days to years. It is worth mentioning that penalties scale, so someone caught cheating after a 6-month ban would receive a much longer ban on their second offence (probably years, or even perma).
Rest assured, anyone caught clearly cheating (without a shadow of a doubt) will face long penalties on their first offence.
Child abuse:
CSEA (child sexual exploitation abuse), CSAM (child sexual abuse material), and/or grooming all have one penalty. Straight permanent ban.
These people will never be able to access any PlaySafe Protected game or service again.
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When you verify yourself, Onfido check if you’re real and if they’ve seen you before.
They only notify us to create you a PlaySafe ID if you pass the check, and they’ve never seen you before. This process means we don’t have to see your data to know you’re real, and it prevents anyone from creating a second PlaySafe ID.
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False positives most often occur from heuristic detections, and usually in ban waves. That said, they do still happen.
To combat this, we have four safeguards:
In order for a game to submit a violation, they have to note what was detected and provide some form of evidence as to what they observed (a payload containing the stat trace).
Every user has a trust score. How long have you used PlaySafe ID, how many game sessions have you played, how much time have you played, etc.
We look at the context of the game, the evidence provided, and weigh up the trust score.
PlaySafe ID decide if someone should get a penalty, regardless of the Game Dev’s decision to the game account. We might decide that your PlaySafe ID shouldn’t receive a penalty, even if the game dev issues on to your game account.
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Simple; don’t connect it, and don’t interact with people who have.
You can 100% continue as you are today.
If you don’t connect your ID however, you don’t get all the benefits of the trust and safe play that comes with only interacting with other people that are PlaySafe verified. But ultimately, you don’t have to connect your PlaySafe ID to something if you don’t want to.
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Free for players forever. We charge games studios, and they’re willing to pay for a few reasons.
Firstly, we reduce a lot of compliance risk for games studios, particularly on child safety, anti-fraud, and trust & safety. Each of these areas carry multi-million dollar fines, so it’s essential they do whatever they can to safeguard users.
Secondly, PlaySafe ID users are happier, play more, and spend more on average, so studios increase their bottom line.
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TLDR: Our CEO was fed up with cheating in games and wanted to make a real solution. Anti-cheat is an essential tool, but it falls short. It doesn’t matter if you’re caught cheating - you can just create a new account.
PlaySafe ID was born out of frustration with how bad the gaming experience has gotten, and exists to provide meaningful accountability. Players want to have a fair and fun time, and parent’s want to know that pedo’s are kept away from their kids. PlaySafe ID is here to ensure both of those things are true.
