Is COPPA Avoidance a Strategy for COPPA Compliance?

At AgeCheq, we pay pretty close attention to the mobile game and app market.  I’ve been writing about COPPA in this blog for over a year now and I’ve covered a lot of different privacy and COPPA issues that I think game developers could benefit from knowing if they didn’t want to risk FTC fines. 

My underlying assumption has been that as a game developer, you are interested in protecting your company and career by doing the right thing.  I’ve explained what the law was intended to do and how modern app structure makes it difficult for an individual developer to comply with the law. 

But what if you just want to bypass the COPPA issue altogether.  How could it be done? Can your game be “COPPA Avoidant?”

The answer might surprise you.

Yes, you can completely sidestep COPPA, with all of its baggage.  If your game or app never collects any PII, you are not subject to COPPA.

Let me say that again.  If your game does not collect any personally identifiable information, you don’t have to worry about COPPA at all.

How can a modern game publisher build a game that never collects any PII?  Well for starters, you can’t use any ad networks or any third party services that identify the user’s device.  So for monetization, you’ll have to go with In-App Purchasing … oh, wait, IAP captures device information so you can’t use that either.  If your game uses Gamecenter for leaderboards, you’ll have to get rid of that too.  Basically, everything you want to put in your game that makes it more fun or profitable captures PII.

To avoid COPPA, create “Off The Grid” (OTG) games that exist in their own world, unconnected with other players, ad networks, optimizers, crash reporters, analytics, leaderboards, and in-app purchasing APIs.  Since ads and IAP are off the table, the only way to monetize OTG apps is as a paid app. 

There’s a large group of very successful game developers who completely avoid COPPA by using this strategy.  Want to know who they are?  Large toy manufacturers and movie studios who use games as marketing tools for other products.  They have the option of making money with paid “companion” apps that support their brands, or giving them away because they promote the purchase of physical toys or episodic digital content.  

To make COPPA avoidant games, simply don’t collect any PII or use any third parties that collect PII and you are good to go. Unfortunately, the reality is that today’s state of the art in games is the opposite, with deep integration of six or eight ad networks, crash reporting, analytics, and maybe some social components or leaderboards.

COPPA avoidance is only really workable for major content providers who view their games as “ancillary” marketing touch points. For the rest of us who need to monetize our games somehow, it’s time to make friends with COPPA and get your games compliant. The law simply isn’t going away, and in fact, there are similar laws coming in the EU and Asia.

If you'd like to educate yourself on COPPA, here's a page of history and links AgeCheq has created for game developers. To learn more about COPPA directly from The Federal Trade Commission, check out this list of answers to frequently asked questions:  http://business.ftc.gov/documents/Complying-with-COPPA-Frequently-Asked-Questions .  Because there are numerous “incomplete” versions on the web, I encourage you to always view the final, official text of the COPPA law, which can be found here: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title16/16cfr312_main_02.tpl