Game Studio Safety Center

Keep your social features.

If your game has chat, voice, or user-generated content and players under 18, you have youth-safety and age-assurance obligations. You do not need a Trust & Safety department to meet them — and you should not have to disable chat or block whole countries to stay out of trouble.

Built by an approved NCMEC CyberTipline ESP and Microsoft PhotoDNA user that operates two live platforms — including one for teenagers.

The question every small studio is asking

"We're a small studio. Our game has chat and user content. We're told we need age assurance — but we don't want to store passports, we don't have a Trust & Safety department, and we have no idea what to budget."
That question has a real answer, and it is not "turn off multiplayer." This page is where we give it away for free.
The trap

Studios disable chat or geo-block jurisdictions because compliance looks too complex. That costs you retention and revenue to solve a problem that has an engineering answer.

The liability nobody mentions

Collecting identity documents to prove age creates a breach target. Storing less is both cheaper and safer — and privacy-preserving age assurance makes it possible.

What regulators actually fine

Enforcement has repeatedly landed on misstating controls and failing information requests — not only on lacking a control. What you can evidence matters as much as what you deploy.

The 2026 Game Studio Youth Safety & Compliance Playbook

A practical technical guide — not a brochure. No form wall on the web version; give us an email only if you want the PDF.

What's inside

  • Does chat or UGC change my safety exposure?
  • Age verification vs. estimation vs. assurance
  • Where the age signal should enter your architecture
  • What changes when minors and adults can interact
  • Detecting predatory behaviour without keyword filters
  • What records to keep — and for how long
  • Build vs. buy for a team of five
  • The questions to ask any safety vendor

Companion templates

  • Player Safety Code of Conduct template
  • Player Chat Risk Assessment template
  • Adult–Minor Interaction Threat Model
  • Evidence Retention Decision Worksheet

Read the Playbook →   Email me the PDF

Safety Readiness Assessment

Twelve questions about your title. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere. You get a gap report, not a compliance certificate.

Game Studio Safety Readiness

Priority areas
    This is not a legal determination and not a certification. It is an engineering self-assessment to help you see where the gaps are and what to ask about. Compliance obligations depend on your jurisdictions, your audience and your own risk assessment — confirm them with qualified counsel.

    Talk through these results with us

    From studio problem to compliance evidence

    Four questions every regulated platform has to answer — and the component that answers each.

    1. Who is allowed into this experience? → Ceremony
      Privacy-preserving age assurance and verifiable parental consent. Zero-knowledge proofs establish that an adult authorised the account, without storing identity documents.
    2. Are safety requirements being maintained? → Assurance
      Detects adults seeking unauthorised access to minor spaces using behavioural and conversational patterns over time, not keyword filters. A flag never bans; escalation is human-gated.
    3. Can we demonstrate what happened? → Ledger
      Every policy decision recorded in a hash-chained, signed sequence — independently verifiable by you, an acquirer, or a court.
    4. Must this evidence be preserved? → Evidence Preservation
      Encrypted preservation with configurable retention and lawful erasure. Proof that something happened survives even after readable content is redacted.
    The architectural principle

    Candor provides the enforcement infrastructure. You define the policy parameters. Catalyst executes your configured policy and preserves verifiable evidence of that execution. Your compliance team owns the policy — we make it demonstrable. And under Split-Authority Evidence Preservation, we hold the tamper-evident record but cannot read it; you hold the key but cannot silently rewrite history.

    EUDSA · protection of minors · GDPR
    UKOnline Safety Act · age assurance
    USAState age-verification · COPPA
    AUAge-assurance obligations

    Designed to meet these frameworks. "Designed to meet" describes engineering intent — compliance determinations rest with each platform and its counsel.

    The Catalyst Collection Founders Program
    25 companies. One founding cohort.

    We're selecting the first 25 organisations to run Catalyst in production — independent studios and emerging platforms willing to help shape the product. Founding members get the complete collection, direct access to the team, hands-on onboarding, and protected Founder pricing that survives future increases.

    All four products included
    Direct line to the engineering team
    Hands-on onboarding & key ceremony
    Roadmap influence
    Protected Founder pricing
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    Apply to the Founders Program