Detailed FAQs

Your PlaySafe ID is an anonymised and unique ID that is generated when you prove you’re a real person. It’s your key to play in PlaySafe protected matchmaking across games and services where you’ll only play with and against other real people who haven’t been caught cheating, hacking, botting or being inappropriate to children.

You unlock PlaySafe Protected matchmaking by connecting your PlaySafe ID to a game. You can only play here if you have a valid PlaySafe ID without any active penalties. This means that you will only play with real people who haven’t been caught cheating/hacking across any PlaySafe Protected game.

No. PlaySafe ID is an optional extra that you can use if you want, but you don’t have to. You can absolutely play games as they are today and not verify or use us.

We’re not looking to replace regular gaming as it is today, but we want to provide this space for users who do only want to play with / against other verified PlaySafe ID users.

If you want to play in PlaySafe Protected matchmaking where cheaters are held accountable and kept out of games, you do have to verify with us.

13+ with a photo ID: Simply create an account and go through the KYC check. This is handled by our verification partner Entrust - PlaySafe ID doesn't store any of your documents or biometrics. You’ll verify yourself through the Entrust SDK with a picture of a document and taking a motion selfie. We only get notified by Entrust if the verification was successful, we then generate your random and anonymised PlaySafe ID.

Under 13s, or those without a document/ID: A parent will need to create an account with the steps above, and then they can add you as an under-18 user. Note: Child & parents accounts are linked and share penalties.

We use a process called “zero-knowledge verification”. PlaySafe ID doesn’t store any data, documents or biometrics from your verification. We have partnered with Entrust (formally Onfido) who are global leaders in the KYC, identity and verification industry.

Entrust do these checks for banks (including Revolut), insurance companies, and other major institutions. All users are protected by data privacy law imposed on Entrust, including but not limited to; UK, EU, Canadian, and state specific USA data privacy laws. They also have an incredible setup and security.

You verify your identity on the PlaySafe ID platform, powered by Entrust. We get told if the verification was successful by Entrust, and if it is, we generate a random and anonymised PlaySafe ID. It is this PlaySafe ID that is used with games and services.

We have two very simple rules:

1. Don’t use software or hardware to gain an unfair advantage over other players (cheat, hack, bot, script, etc).
2. Don’t groom or engage in inappropriate sexual behavior towards children.

We don’t blacklist based on toxicity or behaviour; that’s at the discretion of the game to handle as they see fit. We ultimately just care about cheating and child safety.

Cheating: It depends, based on the strength of the info we receive. Bans range from weeks to years. It is worth mentioning that penalties scale, so someone caught cheating after a 6-month ban would receive a much longer ban on their next offence.

Child abuse: CSEA (child sexual exploitation abuse), CSAM (child sexual abuse material) etc, and/or grooming all have one penalty. Straight permanent ban. These people will never be able to access any PlaySafe Protected game or service again.

When you verify yourself, Entrust checks if you’re real and if they’ve seen you before. They only notify us to create you a PlaySafe ID if you pass the check, and they’ve never seen you before. This process prevents anyone from creating a second PlaySafe ID.

For a penalty to be put in place against a PlaySafe ID, a number of steps have to be passed before any action is taken.

Firstly, a game developer has to submit a violation against a PlaySafe ID, noting what was detected and providing evidence of what they observed. We then evaluate this violation, looking at:

• The context of the game

• The context of the violation

• Our trust score of the user: How long has the user had a PlaySafe ID without penalties? How many games are connected? How many active sessions across those titles?

• Our trust score of the developer Developers are generally very good and accurate with detecting offenders, but we know there are some that might be overzealous with the ban hammer. Taking their trust score into account prevents this from happening.

Based upon this, we decide what penalty (if any) should be applied. This decision is made separately to what the game developers have enacted on their side. In some cases, we might decide that your PlaySafe ID shouldn’t receive a penalty, even when a certain game account has. There will also be a robust appeals-process that is currently in development.

Simple; don’t connect it, and don’t interact with people who have. You can 100% continue as you are today.

If you don’t connect your PlaySafe ID however, you don’t get all the benefits of the trust and safety that comes with only interacting with other people that are PlaySafe verified. But ultimately, you don’t have to connect your PlaySafe ID to something if you don’t want to.

Free for players forever. We charge games studios, and they’re willing to pay for a couple reasons.

• PlaySafe ID users are happier, play more, and spend more on average, so studios increase their bottom line.

• We reduce a lot of compliance risk for games studios, particularly on child safety, anti-fraud, and trust & safety. Each of these areas carry multi-million dollar fines, so it’s essential they do whatever they can to safeguard users.

We’re not a detection tool, but we are an accountability solution. Game developers continue using their existing anti-cheat tools and methods to detect and ban cheaters. PlaySafe ID then makes these bans matter by keeping cheaters out.

Our role is enforcing accountability, ensuring consequences extend across all PlaySafe- protected matchmaking in games, rather than directly detecting cheats.

As of today, cheaters can just get a new account and come straight back into the game. This is the bit we’re solving. We prevent cheaters from creating new accounts and coming straight back into games.

We only enable users with a valid PlaySafe ID into protected matchmaking. Every player can only ever get one PlaySafe ID. Cheaters are kept out, and only legit players can play.

We are only looking to integrate officially into games and not private / community servers. It is to avoid the scenario of admin abuse that can happen in private / community servers.

Key thing to note here, this will be an added optional within games for users who only want to play with / against other verified PlaySafe ID users. We are not looking to replace how matchmaking works today.

No. It only bans you from rejoining PlaySafe Protected matchmaking in those games. You would still be able to play on a new game account, you just wouldn’t be able to rejoin PlaySafe Protected matchmaking on that new account.

This has zero effect on offline games. We only operate in multiplayer games.

If you were caught cheating and suffered a ban on your PlaySafe ID account, you’ll still be able to play games normally (on your game accounts that have not been banned), you just wouldn't be able to play in PlaySafe Protected matchmaking until your penalty has been served.

We've got stuff in place to prevent account cracking, selling, trading, spoofing etc. Any change in IP, HWID, or other suspicious activity on the account gets the PlaySafe ID locked until a selfie-re-auth is completed. Also, any "new" game you want to connect to will require 2FA.

If our systems detect unusual activity on your account you will be required to re-auth your account to be able to continue using your PlaySafe ID. This extra security layer along with other robust systems in place ensures your account is protected at all times.

A game developer has to call our API to get the status of your PlaySafe ID (if you’ve been caught cheating or not). This has to be in place in order for the service to work. We don’t care what games you’re playing - we just care that only valid PlaySafe ID users are allowed to play in PlaySafe Protected matchmaking.

One of the big benefits for this though, is that certain information from your gaming sessions can be used to help us build a user trust score. This in turn helps us evaluate bans more accurately.

In such an event, your games would remain fully playable as usual. Only the PlaySafe-protected matchmaking portion would stop operating.

Under 18’s without a document need a parent/guardian to create an account first. The parent can then add the child as a “child account”. Note: Child accounts share penalties with the parent to prevent misuse.

Entrust (formally Onfido) who are our identity verification partners can verify identities across 195+ countries and support over 2,500 document types. So, any adult without a valid ID here, would simply continue using standard matchmaking as PlaySafe ID is optional.

• A user has to KYC in order to get a PlaySafe ID
• They can only add a maximum of 3 children without getting in contact with us for more
• All penalties are shared between the parent and all children. So if any one child is caught, all children + the parent face the same penalty

A user caught grooming or being sexual towards children that has had their PlaySafe ID permanently banned, would have their request for data deletion denied. This is part of our legitimate interest, the legitimate interest of all of the other users, as well as the data collected is still required for the original purpose of which it was collected. They will not be able to create a different account, and will never have access to PlaySafe protected services again.

In addition, we also abide by our legal obligation to report users caught grooming or being sexual towards children to local authorities.

Coming soon

We initially planned to launch PlaySafe ID like this, however we realised it creates more issues than it solves. As a result, we’ve gone with a tiered approach, which scales for repeat offenders. This also gives the chance for rehabilitation.

It's still going to be a pretty hefty penalty on first offence for the worst offenders and still a straight perma-ban for people caught being sexual toward children, CSEA, CSAM etc.

Yes. This is hardware that gives players an unfair advantage over other players.

Any software or hardware used to gain an unfair advantage whilst using your PlaySafe ID, detected and banned for by the game developer, would be reviewed and result in us taking some form of action.

This is down to the game developers themselves and the anti-cheat they have implemented. We are not the anti-cheat, we work alongside those to bring real accountability to cheaters once caught.

They store the data from the verification, but our systems and network don't communicate with theirs. This means that on our side, we don't get any info from the verification other than "success" and we create a PlaySafe ID, or "Fail", and we don't.

Entrust do these checks for banks, insurance companies, and other major institutions. They're global leaders, and all users are protected by data privacy law imposed on Entrust, including but not limited to; UK, EU, Canadian, and state specific USA data privacy laws. They also have an incredible setup and security.

The likes of Revolut use Entrust to provide the same service they do for us.

Everyone has the right to request erasure. We have internal data retention policies outlining this. The outcome of the request will depend on the circumstances of the account and any penalties on the account.

Two examples are:

• A user with a clean PlaySafe ID (no history of bans etc), the request would be granted.
• A user caught grooming or being sexual towards children that has had their PlaySafe ID permanently banned, the request would be denied. This is based on: -- Our legitimate interest to uphold the integrity of the service, -- The legitimate interest of every other user and the fulfilment of the contract with those users as to protect, -- The legitimate interest of game developers integrating PlaySafe ID, to provide a fair and safe gaming environment for PlaySafe ID users, -- In this case, as per the UK ICO: The data that we have is still required for the original purpose of which it was collected (to keep predators and cheaters out of games), -- As well as some additional purposes.

For full details on our data handling, processing and policies you can see our data privacy policy on our website.

IP addresses have VPNs. HWID has HWID spoofers. Any kind of hardware or tech anchor fails, because they’re easily bypassed.

The only way that this can work is tied to your real ID in some way. Any other method cycles back to the same issue of easily being able to create new accounts and coming straight back in.

We completely understand providing ID is a major blocker for a lot of people. It's why this is an added optional feature within games for users who do only want to play with / against other verified PlaySafe ID users.

This is an obvious concern we have thought about. We've got stuff in place to prevent account cracking, selling, trading, spoofing etc. Any change in IP, HWID, or other suspicious activity on the account gets the PlaySafe ID locked until a selfie-re-auth is completed. Also, any "new" game you want to connect to will require 2FA.

So, if you buy a random identity online, you wont pass the KYC check. If you buy an already verified PlaySafe ID account online, the minute you go to use it, it will trigger our account security and the account will be locked until a selfie re-auth has been completed.

We're doing our absolute best to mitigate the potential workarounds to our system.

No.

The KYC check is forced on a mobile device through the Onfido SDK. This process means that the SDK can run lots of checks from what is being transmitted and what is being received to ensure that it is the real image, and the liveness is true. For example changing the camera settings to see if focus changes, adjusting lighting, applying filters that you can’t see, but the SDK can.

All of this means that they can very easily detect if it’s a real person/document or not, and protect against device and image injection. It has to be the actual live real person's face.

We get an applicant ID from Entrust (formally Onfido) so we can parse that back and say: "Do a selfie check against this previous verification ID"

They do the selfie check and check it against the original, and post back to us "yes" or "no" again. We never share the PlaySafe ID to Onfido, so they can never match the verification data to a user.

There is no kernel level anything you have to install with us. There is actually nothing you have to install with us. (We are discussing the development of an app to help manage your PlaySafe ID and for 2FA etc).

We integrate directly into the games themselves. So you simply just have to create your PlaySafe ID account, complete the KYC check to get verified, then link your anonymised PlaySafe ID to any integrated game to start playing.