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Singapore start-up k-ID, which offers tools to help game publishers and parents protect children and teenagers from online harms, closed US$45 million (S$61 million) in venture capital funding last week. Led by US-based venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, the latest round of funding comes eight months after an initial shot in the arm of US$5 million from Andreessen Horowitz’s gaming accelerator a16z Speedrun and US-based venture capital firms Konvoy and Tirta in late 2023. k-ID has developed software, said to be the first of its kind, that offers granular parental controls and verifications that comply with differing regulations regardless of where players are located. Parents can configure the online experience to suit the digital maturity of their children with the ability to adjust access to features such as chats, private messages and in-app purchases. k-ID’s tech allows developers to understand when a child should not be sent advertisements for gambling, mature-rated movies or other R-rated content according to local regulations. In some jurisdictions, game publishers can also verify the age of every user against government-issued identification, a major step in the fight against online harms. k-ID co-founder and chief executive Kieran Donovan said game publishers have been dealing with a lot of complexity over the last 10 years in protecting young gamers, and there is an immediate recognition from the industry that this problem needs to be solved. Mr Donovan is also driven by his own childhood trauma involving sexual abuse and his role as a father of two sons to protect young people’s online safety. In 2022, he testified as a victim-survivor in an Australian trial on childhood sexual abuse, an experience he had carried for 20 years and prefers not to revisit due to its painful nature. With growing pressures on platform operators, including e-commerce and gaming, to identify their account holders and encourage responsible online interactions amid harms such as trolling, cyber-bullying, grooming and malicious scams, there is an urgent need for measures that safeguard children who have their lives entrenched in the digital landscape, he added. k-ID says that many of the biggest game publishers have signed on as customers, but declined to reveal who they are. k-ID’s technology is expected to come on stream in August, supporting multiple titles on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox and the Epic Games Store. The latest fund injection will help k-ID further develop and market its compliance software to more online gaming platforms. k-ID relies on a manually compiled database to aggregate user access to gaming websites. The database contains pre-existing identity verification procedures, which differ globally, obtaining of parental consent and legal compliance with regulation providers that children need to gain access to particular game features and functions, said Mr Donovan. The system updates differing compliance standards and regulations on a daily basis for developers to navigate when designing their games, for users to ultimately access age-appropriate features. The k-ID engine reads users’ age, location and previous logins (such as on Google, Xbox and Apple) to configure each child’s sign-in, identity verification procedures and the platform features they can access, according to their jurisdiction and what parents deem appropriate for them. Parents can customise their children’s gaming experience, such as disabling global chat functions and features of online gambling, where such features can be omitted, so that they receive only age-appropriate access. “Kids will always choose the ability to play and explore over their safety, and this trades off their safety for accessibility,” said Mr Wu. Mr Donovan said: “It is a challenge to balance putting out technologies that are safer while being careful not to restrict children’s access to the communities they currently enjoy online, as they are now building more of their identities and communities online and from a younger age than ever before.” The start-up also aims to address another issue plaguing game developers and publishers – complexity in regulatory compliance. Different countries have different laws to regulate what features children can access.  For instance, on June 4, Spain approved a draft law banning minors from accessing “loot boxes” in video games, and in Australia, as at 2023, games featuring loot boxes must be rated as unsuitable for those under 15, while those with simulated gambling are restricted to users aged 18 and above. With k-ID, game-makers and publishers can focus on spending their assets and resources on building the games themselves rather than on managing compliance, said Mr Wu. The start-up will unveil its first publicly announced title, Gorilla Tag – a virtual reality game by developer Another Axiom – on June 25. “We want a paradigm shift around the ‘confirm that I’m over 13’ pop-up, which is huge, because the whole internet is predicated on that and has been for 30 years,” Mr Donovan said. k-ID was founded by former executives of big tech firms Meta, Tencent, Google and Take-Two, and game publisher Electronic Arts.