Australian Steam users started hitting an age check this week on adult store pages, and the way out of it is reportedly adding a credit card. The law behind this is real and dated. What Valve has actually said about Australia is a much shorter list.
Start with the part that is solid. Australia's eSafety Commissioner registered an industry code called the Age-Restricted Material Code for App Distribution Services under the Online Safety Act 2021. The codes covering app distribution services took effect on 9 March 2026, and the age assurance obligations inside them commenced on 9 September 2026. That timing lines up with when Australian players started running into this.
Here is the bit worth reading twice. eSafety's own guidance does not require a credit card. Its published list of acceptable methods includes parental confirmation, photo ID, facial age estimation, credit card checks, digital ID wallets, AI age estimation, or a third party vendor, and it says plainly that it is up to the individual platforms to decide which methods they use. Asked directly whether people will have to hand over a government ID, credit card or driver's licence, eSafety's answer is no. Failing to comply with a direction can attract penalties of up to $49.5 million.
So the credit card is a choice, not a requirement of the code.
What Valve has published about Australia is where this gets thin. There is no Australian Steam Support page on this, no Steam announcement post, and no statement from Valve that I can find. The message Australian users are seeing in the client says Valve is required by the code to verify that you are 18 or older before accessing mature content, and directs you to add a valid Australian credit card. That message is being reported consistently, but it is not something Valve has put on a page anyone can link to.
Valve has published its reasoning for the identical mechanism in the UK, where the Online Safety Act drove the same change. That page states an account is considered age verified for as long as a valid credit card is stored on it, that debit cards do not qualify because they can be issued to minors, that keeping the card stored acts as a deterrent against people sharing one account, and that among the methods Valve reviewed this one preserves the most user privacy. That page says at the top that it is for UK users only, so treat it as Valve's thinking rather than Valve's Australian policy.
The practical details doing the rounds are user reports rather than published policy: Visa and Mastercard working, Amex, debit, prepaid and PayPal not, the card needing to stay linked, and games you already own still launching. Valve has not confirmed any of that for Australia, and there is no confirmed answer on whether this hits only R18+ pages or MA15+ ones as well.