Türkiye Passes New Gaming Rules, Mandatory Age Ratings for Platforms

Steam, Epic Games Store and PlayStation Store now have a six-month clock ticking in Türkiye, and publishers could see unrated games pushed into the country’s highest age bracket unless they move fast on classification and safety checks. Under the new digital-safety package passed by the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, foreign gaming platforms with more than 100,000 daily users from Türkiye must appoint a legal representative in the country and publish clear age-classification and safety information.

For players, the practical fallout is immediate and easy to understand: access to games, storefront pages and platform features may increasingly depend on age verification, parental controls and publisher compliance. Unrated titles may be treated as 18+ until they are properly classified, while the rules also require parental-control tools covering screen time and in-app purchases. That puts pressure not just on Steam, Epic and PlayStation, but on any overseas service with meaningful traffic in Türkiye to adapt store policy, account flows and support systems before regulators start leaning on enforcement.

The law goes broader than gaming. Social platforms must bar users under 15 from registering, while users 15 and over must be routed through age-appropriate services with age verification in place. Large social platforms with more than 10 million daily users in Türkiye face even stricter obligations, a sign that Ankara is aiming this at the biggest global services first. Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş has framed the package as a child-protection move, saying the government had defined the framework for under-15 rules and obligations for social networks and game platforms.

Enforcement is built to bite. Officials can move from an advertising ban after 30 days of noncompliance to bandwidth reductions of 50% and, for persistent violations, up to 90%. That gives the Information Technologies and Communication Authority serious leverage over companies that drag their feet on local representation, age-gating or content requests. The result is a compliance crackdown with real player consequences, especially if platforms decide it is easier to limit features than absorb the risk.

The political backdrop has made the bill harder to ignore. It moved forward after a deadly school shooting in Kahramanmaraş, where a 14-year-old killed nine students and a teacher, and the Republican People’s Party criticized the proposal as a bans-first approach. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also backed a tougher line on digital platforms, while Türkiye now joins a wider wave of child-safety rules spreading through countries such as Australia, France, Greece and Portugal. For game storefronts and publishers, the message is blunt: Türkiye is no longer just another market, it is a test case for how far platform accountability can reach before access itself becomes the penalty.