[HalibetLector]

From a legal standpoint, there absolutely is a need to know your full name and birth date. It's called the FTC Coppa rule, where it's illegal to collect and disclosing personal information of children under age 13 without their parents’ prior consent. Acclaim got dinged by that last year and as a result, some games no longer allow underage players at all.

[jfoutz]

I'm, obviously, not a lawyer, but how could this possibly be a game developer's problem? you have to be 13 to have a google+ account. If they were under 13, google wouldn't vouch for them.

[tensor]

Yet flash games get along just fine despite that law. Worse, G+ also seems to broadcast which games you play. I use Google+ for its privacy features. I too decided not to touch any of the games due to their lack of privacy guards.

[Firehed]

Uh, if you don't collect any personal information, COPPA isn't an issue. So if you don't ask for name and birthdate, you have no need to ask for their birthdate. To my knowledge, playing a game requires no personal information.

[chii]

...unless they plan to monetize your information, hence first requiring your concent to it...

[jellicle]

The trivial way to avoid that rule is to avoid collecting and disclosing personal information from any players of your game, which seems pretty easy.

[midko]

Knowing if someone is below or above 13 is different than knowing your exact birth date. G+ should simply confirm to that game that you are over 13 rather that give your exact details

[luriel]

How exactly does someone check that someone is above or below a certain age online?

The utter absurdity of such checks boggles my mind.

Also noticed them when simply accessing sites which just contain information about a game, seriously, wtf? Does anyone visiting such a site ever bother to enter their actual age/birth-date?

Sounds like the result of some extremely dumb law and management not having the guts to do the right thing and ignore it.

[icebraining]

How exactly does someone check that someone is above or below a certain age online?

If you don't want to allow < 13, you just need to make sure you ask and don't accept people who reply with < 13. It then becomes the kid's legal guardian responsibility to make sure the child doesn't use the service.

If you do want to accept it, you need to use IRL methods (phone call, credit card, etc).

[pcwalton]

"Sounds like the result of some extremely dumb law and management not having the guts to do the right thing and ignore it."

Am I reading this properly or did you suggest that Google should be above the law?

[luriel]

In a way Google itself has from the start been based on ignoring (certain aspects) of a dumb law: copyright.

They download/copy content from millions of sites without explicit permission.

Of course that example is more ambiguous as the definition of fair use is vague (and ever-changing), but is not all that different.

If every business followed every law in the books the economy would crawl to a halt.

[kaonashi]

LPA's don't require a name.