The Turkish Grand National Assembly passed a law earlier this week establishing the first dedicated regulatory framework for gaming platforms operating in Turkiye.
The legislation applies to platforms exceeding 100,000 daily active users and introduces a set of baseline obligations that platforms will be required to meet, according to a memo distributed by a game industry group in Turkiye.
We wrote a story earlier about how game developers were worried about how tough the law would be on game companies. It isn’t yet clear what the impact will be.
Under the law, qualifying platforms must appoint a local representative or law office in Turkiye. This does not require establishing a physical office or hiring a local employee. Platforms must also implement a functioning age classification system using established ratings and provide parental control tools. In addition, they are required to share information directly related to compliance with the law, including corporate structure, information systems, and data processing mechanisms, to the extent relevant to their obligations under this legislation.
The law does not impose any obligations on game developers or publishers. Its scope is limited to platform operators meeting the daily active user threshold.
Platforms have six months from enactment to achieve compliance. After that period, a non-compliant platform will receive a formal warning with a 30-day window to act. Failure to comply within that window results in a fine of approximately 20,000 to 200,000 USD and a further 30-day notice.
A second failure triggers a fine in the range of 200,000 to 650,000 USD and another 30-day period. If non-compliance continues, a 30% traffic restriction is applied, escalating to between 30% and 50% after an additional 30 days, where it remains until the platform meets its obligations. Platforms that come into compliance at any stage are eligible to pay only one quarter of the applicable fines.
The operational details of how specific requirements will be applied in practice, including the age classification framework, will be defined through secondary legislation to be issued by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority in the months ahead.
The game developers are planning a fuller analysis for publishers and platform operators, but they will wait until the secondary legislation is out. The bylaws will define the operational details, so the picture won’t be complete until then.
But the group released a statement on its website yesterday, it’s mostly an assessment of the legislative process and strategy going forward, said Tuğbek Ölek, in a message to GamesBeat. “We have ensured the passage of a law that we believe our industry can adapt to, implement, and that will not obstruct its healthy long-term development. The vast majority of the demands we have publicly voiced to date have been accepted. This is an achievement that very few sectors facing a regulatory agenda have managed to accomplish.”
Gajda Andreea, a PR professional in Turkiye, was monitoring the developments. She said in a message to GamesBeat, “Mostly good news. The original bill had clauses that would’ve put impossible compliance requirements on both platforms and developers simultaneously the kind of stuff that would’ve basically forced platforms like Steam to pull out of Turkey entirely, or face shutdown. Most of that got walked back. The dev side obligations were especially cleaned up.”
Andreea added, “On top of that, there’s been progress on two long standing issues for Turkish devs: getting developer hardware kits into the country has always been a bureaucratic nightmare, and that’s being addressed. There’s also movement on reducing the heavy taxes on games and consoles here, which has been a pain point for years. Still not perfect, but way better than what it started as a real win for the local scene.”