LogInThe website's Founder says it's not the new owner's fault.
Two weeks. It's been two weeks since the biggest modding hub Nexus Mods was sold to a shady entity known as Chosen, and the string of unpopular decisions has already begun.
However, contrary to the main concern about the new owners introducing predatory monetization models, the first decision to draw a mixed-to-negative response from the community has nothing to do with how mods are monetized, pertaining instead to the upcoming requirement for users in the UK and EU to verify their age should they wish to access the spicier mods hosted on Nexus.
According to the website's official statement, Nexus is rolling out a number of changes in the coming weeks and months to combat illegal content and impose additional restrictions on children's access to adult material.
While some of those changes are unequivocally positive – such as the introduction of automated detection for child sexual abuse material that will automatically remove the content, ban the uploader, and report them to rozzers, or the new Ignore feature that hides all content from users you've chosen to ignore – these feel more like a silver lining to an otherwise unwelcome announcement: going forward, EU/UK-based users will be required to verify their age before accessing adult content.
Regarding what "adult content" even is, Nexus has clarified that sexualized materials, along with those related to pornography, extreme violence, harmful substances, suicide, self-harm, depression, body stigma, swearing or profanity, and eating disorders, will now be tagged by moderators and locked as 18+ once marked. While some of these categories make sense, others like "extreme violence" and "swearing or profanity" can't help but evoke the image of Jack Thompson-esque activism, and have raised some eyebrows considering how many games and mods feature that kind of content.
As for why the company is making these changes, Nexus says the updates are "part of our legal obligation to comply with the UK government's new Online Safety Act and the EU's Digital Services Act, along with the guidance being issued by Ofcom (the UK’s regulator)."
However, as some users have noticed, the UK's Orwellian Online Safety Act came into effect back in March, and the EU's Digital Services Act doesn't require online platforms to collect or process additional personal data just to determine if a user is a minor, raising questions about why these updates are only being announced now, and why EU users are being included in them at all.
Following the announcement's publication and the obvious backlash that came after, Nexus Mods Founder Robin Scott, a.k.a. Dark0ne, shared an update saying the website's new owner is not responsible for the changes, but rather the government, noting that if he were still in charge, he would've had to implement the same measures.
"Whoever owned Nexus Mods, whether it was still me or the new ownership, would have had to have dealt with it this year no matter what," Dark0ne said. "Frankly, I'm relieved that it is not me who has to deal with this or be responsible for the content on the site directly because I have some big misgivings about how it is being enforced. However, if it was me, I would still have followed the letter of the law, and I'd have been doing what is written above. Because I'd have to.
So yes, you can be worried or angry with the direction the internet is taking and the amount of control governments are enforcing on it around the world, but the law is the law, and Nexus Mods will, and must, follow the law."
At the moment, it remains unknown exactly how Nexus plans to introduce mandatory age verification for UK and EU users, since a simple tickbox saying "Yes, I'm 18 or above" won't cut it under the new law.
The main concern among users is that the website will require attaching some form of ID to confirm one's age, such as a passport or driver's license, with many justifiably worried about where such sensitive data might end up and some hesitant to provide this information to Nexus itself, with it now being run by some obscure corporates and all. You can see user reactions in the – closed, naturally – comment section under the original announcement.
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