vivdunstan

IFComp 2025 is now open for judging. There are 85 new interactive fiction games and stories in there. Free to play. Judging runs until October 15th.

This year the UK's Online Safety Act and very recent developments in it have posed considerable challenges to the IFComp organisers and IFTF folks. They have navigated their way through it as best as they can. But currently 24 of the 85 games are geoblocked to all UK players. Until a few days ago it was going to be all 85 ...

More details of the approach taken are in the IFComp blog at https://blog.ifcomp.org

Just did the age verification (UK) thing for Bluesky. Using my face with laptop camera. Photo supposedly deleted afterwards. The website was estimating my age, and I'm saying "Tell me a number!" Or probably best don't! It didn't give me a guessed age, but it was sure I was old enough. So yup, done.

Bluesky is one of the first services asking for this verification from UK folks due to new legislation. It's likely more will do this soon too. Verification can be done by photo (if you look old enough) or ID. I was much happier with a brief photo check than doing anything with my official paper ID. I'd probably not have been willing to do the latter option.

Age verification is currently not essential to use Bluesky, even with the new UK legislation. Most of the site's features will work without it. Though not direct messaging, which is something I find useful sometimes.