Lovers Lab, an adult modding website, has been a mainstay in the modding scene of a few specific games for a long time, such asSkyrimand The Sims 4. For as long as these games have existed, modders of a certain mind have been making characters do unspeakable things to one another.
Lovers Lab has become synonymous with fan-created adult content for several games, and now, users of the site are concerned about its future after the implementation of the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act.
The Online Safety Act is new legislation that compels websites hosting adult content to “robustly” verify the age of their users. The UK’s relevant regulatory body, Ofcom, has suggested that sites implement various age verification measures, such as asking users to upload identification, estimating age from a selfie, or through credit card checks.
Skyrim After Dark
As you can imagine, this is a tricky prospect for websites. It’s exceedingly unlikely that users would be willing to upload sensitive information to websites with dubious security credentials. Lovers Lab is not a professional, corporation-owned site, meaning the site hosts are unlikely to build the infrastructure necessary to safely store the sensitive data of users.
A recent case involved the ‘Tea’ application, a women-only dating safety app that allowed women to discuss dating prospects in a space inaccessible to men. Tea suffered a massive data breach, with the IDs of over 13,000 women having been leaked.
Athread on the websiteexpressed these concerns, wondering if the site will be banned in the UK for not complying with the new legislation. A site administrator eventually replied, simply saying, “I don’t know, maybe? And that’s my final, honest answer.”
The most likely outcome is that access to Lovers Lab will be restricted in the United Kingdom (and eventually the European Union), and users in these regions will have to use a VPN to access the site, though Ofcom prohibits sites from encouraging this workaround.
Nexus Modsrecently released a lengthy statement, saying the site “would be making some changes […] in regards to adult content.” These changes include age verification, but Nexus has yet to outline the specifics of this change.
It’s not just the UK that will be affected by these changes, as a similar guideline under the European Union’s Digital Services Act has also been enacted, which contains many of the same regulations surrounding age verification.
A separate issue involving card payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard has seenhundreds of adult games removed from Steam and Itch.
