Turkish government proposes legislation that would throttle Steam and other gaming platforms into unusability if they don't comply with demands for company data and content removal

Türkiye's Family and Social Services Ministry, as part of wider legislation aimed at restricting child social media access, has drafted legislation that would impose restrictions and intensive oversight on Steam, Epic, and other digital gaming platforms (via Türkiye Today).

While the legislation hasn't yet undergone parliamentary consideration, it would allow the Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, routinely and credibly accused of authoritarian media censorship and information suppression, to restrict traffic on platforms to the point of being unusable if they don't comply with its requirements.

According to a draft of the legislation obtained by DW Turkish, gaming platforms beyond a certain size would be required to maintain either a regional office or a legal representative within Türkiye, whose information would be reported to Türkiye's Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) and made public. Additionally, BTK would be able to demand any information from digital platforms, including "corporate structure, algorithms, and data processing mechanisms."

Companies that fail to provide the expected information within five days would be subject to escalating fines and, eventually, bandwidth throttling of associated traffic by up to 90%.

The legislation would also require all games sold on digital platforms to have an appropriate age rating, with unrated games being removed from platform listings. While countries like Germany have similar age rating requirements, it's unclear whether Steam's own age rating tools would suffice or if BTK would expect games to be rated by authorities like PEGI—which can involve application fees of thousands of dollars that may not be affordable for indie developers.

The drafted legislation would also grant BTK authority for monitoring and demanding modifications to game content. Under earlier Turkish laws restricting online activity, platforms operating in Türkiye have been required to remove content deemed to be illegal within 24 hours.

As with many recent efforts to regulate online activity in the US, the UK, and elsewhere, the proposed Turkish legislation justifies its measures as being necessary to ensure child safety. Digital rights groups, however, criticize many of those efforts as using child safety as a guise for restricting civil liberties and information freedoms.

"Legislators have spent an enormous amount of energy pushing dangerous legislation that’s intended to limit young people’s use of some of the most popular sites and apps, all under the guise of protecting kids," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation about child safety-oriented online regulation in the US. "Unfortunately, many of these bills would run roughshod over the rights of young people and adults in the process."