Alexandra Kurdyumova is co-founder and CEO of Futura. Anton Karpenko is a project lead at Futura.
The Digital Services Act is now producing decisions, but most of the attention has been on platforms far larger than a typical game studio.
For a studio with a chat, player-made content or other community features, the more useful question is simpler: which parts of the DSA actually apply to your game, and which don’t?
The DSA (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) has applied since 17 February 2024. It covers intermediary services, including hosting services that store information provided by users. That can include some very familiar game features: in-game chat, forums, player-created content and other community spaces.
This is where games come in. In-game text and voice chat, clan pages, forums, custom maps, mods and player-made skins can all involve information stored at a player's request. So can the smallest pieces of player input: a username or an avatar the player uploads or creates, that other players see. A studio that is confident it hosts no user content often still hosts those.
If your studio runs any of these features, it may be providing a hosting service under the DSA. However, whether a particular game feature qualifies as a hosting service depends on its technical implementation and the nature of the service provided. The mere processing of player data does not necessarily mean that the game as a whole constitutes a hosting service under the DSA.
The DSA applies to services offered to users located in the EU irrespective of where the provider is established, so no EU entity is required.
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