Yes I agree. I was shocked it asked for account. Sad shame.

Yeah I quit for that reason, very strange we need an account for this game

Hello! We understand that some players might be curious about our decision to require account creation for the game. Here's the reason why:

"Hi there! Shawn from the dev team here. The reason why we are asking for birth YEAR (not date) is to be compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) - “COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.”.

Although we don’t target children, you can see from the art style that one could argue otherwise. We’re playing it safe. If you do enter an age under a certain threshold, we even branch out to a different signup flow in-game where a legal guardian is involved in the process. You can opt out of data collection at first login or at the game settings anytime. Country and timezone are requested just to support certain features in the game where we ensure the random message bottles you receive from other players are from the same region/culture/shared language. It also helps give us the opportunity to setup localized events in-game for specific regions in the future.

As for what data we’re actually collecting, it’s really just in-game actions like how many times a menu has been seen, in-game error logs, what items are most favourited or used etc. We have no interest in selling data to advertisers. I don’t even know how that works to be honest.

The idea was to make Weyrdlets cross-play-compatible with other platforms (itch.io) for its future multiplayer features and not being fully committed to Steam’s ecosystem was one way to achieve that. We did consider taking out account creation and introduce a guest mode for demo/full game, but we haven’t been able to allocate time for it. All hands are on deck for the core game experience at the moment.

I’ll be making adjustments to our T&C/Privacy Policy over the weekend to more accurately reflect what Weyrdlets is about. We do really appreciate your comment and hope you give Weyrdlets a second chance :)"


You can also find the answers here: https://www.eurogamer.net/weyrdlets-is-the-virtual-desktop-companion-you-didnt-know-you-needed?view=comments

This game shouldn't require a login and shouldn't require online (for the demo at least). This was exactly my pivot point for not continuing and my kid really wanted to give it a go with me.

You got ahead of COPPA but you nuked potential players. I personally won't be coming back to this one unfortunately. Best of luck.

Yeah, for something like this I wouldn't have expected an account. You should only need an account if there's a multiplayer component, and based on the official reply/answer they are planning that in the future.

That's not even mentioning the fact you require an account for a DEMO. That's not a good move, guys. That's just another account we need to create just to try something. I put it on my Followed list and will see what becomes of this whenever it releases.

Maybe during the Next Fest you guys will have a Guest Mode.

Good luck on your game!

Yeah you messed up with this. Also, two points:

1. Steam does not allow verified users under 13.
"Steam is an online service offered by Valve. You become a subscriber of Steam ("Subscriber") by completing the registration of a Steam user account. This Agreement takes effect as soon as you indicate your acceptance of these terms. You may not become a Subscriber if you are under the age of 13. Steam is not intended for children under 13 and Valve will not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13." (https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement)
Yes this doesn't technically stop people lying about their age, but neither does making an account with you either. If a kids lied once, they may well do it again.
And yes children can use Steam with family view https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6B1A-66BE-E911-3D98 but you could probably have restricted your game from this if needed. But this wouldn't be needed since COPPA just needs parental notification and consent "It simply requires that you provide a parent with direct notice and the ability to give verifiable parental consent to data collection on behalf of their child." https://www.playwire.com/blog/what-are-coppa-laws#:~:text=It%20can.%20If%20a%20publisher%20that%20is%20not,not%20required%20to%20follow%20COPPA%20data%20privacy%20laws.
Hell, if you wanted to play it safe you could have age restricted the game, people would probably have taken that better than making a new account with you.
But essentially Steam has already screened ages for you.

2. COPPA only applies in america.
As a Malaysian based company this rule only applies is you were directly targeting an audience of under 13's IN THE US. "If a publisher that is not based in the U.S. is directed toward an audience of children younger than 13 in the U.S., then they are required to follow COPPA rule. However, COPPA publishers in other countries whose audiences are young children who are not in the U.S. are not required to follow COPPA data privacy laws."--https://www.playwire.com/blog/what-are-coppa-laws#:~:text=It%20can.%20If%20a%20publisher%20that%20is%20not,not%20required%20to%20follow%20COPPA%20data%20privacy%20laws.
On the one hand Steam has 13.7 million users in the US (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/steam-users-by-country) but on the other the other top 10 countries alone total 43 million users. In fact US traffic is only about 16.89% of total traffic (19% of traffic is from China) https://www.demandsage.com/steam-statistics/ That's an awful lot of people who the law doesn't even apply to.
Steam already has region tracking in place, so you could have set up region differences in the game to only require logins for those with a US IP address, or simply not allow those from the US to access online gameplay.

Playing it safe may have meant you just shot yourself in the foot.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's disheartening to hear that an account creation can be such a massive blocker. We'll look into a guest mode.

People don't like giving away data to a company they don't know unnecessarily, and having another account to manage and be aware of. You're also causing more work for yourself as you have to handle that data responsibly, complying with GDPR for instance. Do you also have a strong security to protect against data breeches?

You don't need to add a Guest Mode, just get rid of accounts completely. Add an age check when first opening the game after downloading. I don't know of anything that makes you obligated to require more than that, you're already going above and beyond based on the TOS of Steam itself.

guest mode! guest mode! Please~

Originally posted by Kenthria:

People don't like giving away data to a company they don't know unnecessarily, and having another account to manage and be aware of. You're also causing more work for yourself as you have to handle that data responsibly, complying with GDPR for instance. Do you also have a strong security to protect against data breeches?

You don't need to add a Guest Mode, just get rid of accounts completely. Add an age check when first opening the game after downloading. I don't know of anything that makes you obligated to require more than that, you're already going above and beyond based on the TOS of Steam itself.

Agreed, No account is needed, and honestly may cause more problems with GDPR and stuff

I was willing to give it a shot, though didn't feel great about creating an account, especially for a demo. But then it said I had to verify my email, and I waited, and waited, and by the time the email finally came had decided to move on and do something else.

1. Another account.
2. Another account for DEMO.
3. Another account for DEMO that says in tiny fonts that it will collect some data.
Are ya serious?