Gaming: Discord Is Rolling Out Facial Scanning And Id Checks In March For...

The new global policy, which will be required for age-gated servers, "sensitive content," and other features, comes just four months after a leak of 70,000 age verification ID photos.

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.

Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.

From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.

Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.

Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.

Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!

"Eugh," we said, back in 2025 when Discord began "an experiment" in which some users were asked to scan their faces or IDs in order to verify that they were old enough to access sensitive content. But experiments, generally speaking, are tests, and tests, generally speaking, are something you do in pursuit of a particular goal, and now here we are not quite a year later and Discord is preparing to roll out face scanning and ID checks for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

You'll still be able to use Discord if you opt not to participate in this particular surveillance nightmare, but beginning in early March you'll be locked into a "teen-appropriate experience" if you don't. That means content filters, age gates, the inability to speak in "stage channels"—essentially channels that enable a group of people to converse while an audience listens—and restrictions on direct message and friend requests.

Source: PC Gamer