Not about GDevelop itself, but I believe it is a question that concerns many people(including me).
So, with many devs using ads as their primal way of incomes, the COPPA question pops on their mind soon.
Let’s discuss about this.
Is COPPA really something to care about?
Does it affects indie developers at all?
Can a well dedicated privacy police 100% avoid it?
What are you doing to avoid it?
As a dev I worry about it, but in case everything fails, I will have only one choice: Block my app from countries that are affected by the COPPA(USA and the entire EU), the 40.000 fine is too much to handle, especially if you are a indie dev, not a big company. But you know, blocking my app in all these territories could mean much less income and like, I totally wanted that everyone could enjoy my app.
Absolutely, if you’re going to publish a game in the US or EU and you’re going to use Ads.
Yes. It affects all devs that have anything to do with data collection (ads or otherwise).
Not sure what you’re asking here. But if you’re not age-gating your game and ads to exclude kids, you cannot avoid COPPA if you’re publishing in the US or EU. You’ll want to read more about the US regulations here: Children's Privacy | Federal Trade Commission
I can’t seem to find one for the EU.
Personally? As of currently I have no intention to publish any games on mobile nor do ad-supported games, so this doesn’t really impact me.
I know some others have dug into it and are looking at methods of implementing Admob settings that restrict data collection, but I believe you’ll need to have an understanding of javascript to control those settings.
When I asked if a good police protects me against COPPA I meant that if I use a good and well explained privacy police to restrict children under 13 and explain that their data is being collected, then I could avoid COPPA