Roblox was the first to go. Then Discord. And now Türkiye’s government is reportedly deciding whether to ban more platforms related to gaming.
High on the list is Valve’s Steam store, and possibly the Epic Games Store. And that has game developers in the country, which is home to more than 800 game studios.
Türkiye’s rise in gaming started with the popularity of Peak Games, a mobile game maker which Zynga bought in 2020 for $1.8 billion. Hundreds of venture-funded startups blossomed with notable ones including Dream Games, Spyke Games, Rollic Games, Masomo, Fugo Games, Zuuks Games, Good Job Games, TaleWorlds Entertainment, Circle Games, SuperGears Games, Tank Games, Recontact and Surpass Games.
Spokespersons for Valve and Epic did not respond to requests for comment. The TOGED (Turkish Game Developers Association), recently published a public statement addressing the situation on its official website. The group has 35 companies and more than 2,000 members.
“Our discussions regarding the legislation on digital games, which have dominated our country’s agenda for the past three weeks, are continuing at full speed. During this process, we are regularly meeting with our public institutions, industry stakeholders, academics, and international publishers and gaming platforms,” the group said.
[Update: Tugbek Olek, cofounder of Setimedia and head of the advisory board for TOGED said the article has a number inaccuracies as pointed out in a letter attached at the bottom of the story. He does not believe the risk of curbs on creative freedom and an actual ban on Steam are likely, given the conversations with the Turkish government].
One meeting was held on February 17 at the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), attended by Deputy Minister of Transport Ömer Fatih Sayan and BTK Vice President Dr. Abdülkerim Gün, along with 26 representatives from the gaming industry.
Organized jointly by BTK and TOGED (Turkish Game Developers Association), the meeting included representatives from game publishers Tencent and Moonton, investment groups Anka Ventures and Ludus Ventures, GGOG, lawyers, academics, technopark representatives, and numerous domestic game developers and publishers.
The group brought up the advantages of Türkiye officially recognizing PEGI, an international parental advice organization aimed at rating games for children.
“The Ministry openly shared the updated version of the law text with all participants at the meeting, and we had the opportunity for extensive discussion. We were pleased to see that the text, previously prepared in three points, had been amended to address the technical difficulties regarding age rating and parental control, which were also discussed in our previous meeting, making it more implementable,” TOGED said. “The main framework of the text outlines the establishment of a representative in Türkiye, an effective parental control mechanism, and a sound age rating system. If these three points are properly designed and implemented, they can create a foundation consistent with the goals of protecting our children and strengthening digital literacy.”
But the government also disclosed additional clauses that create a framework that grants public institutions a fairly broad scope of authority and, without clearly defined boundaries, could allow for regulations to be made through decrees.
“We are concerned that this additional clause, by introducing regulations targeting the content and mechanics of games, could lead to decisions that are impossible for game platforms to implement,” TOGED said. “Computer games are very large software projects; ‘removing a part’ or rapidly changing it regionally, as in a printed work or video content, requires significant labor, time, and cost in most cases. Therefore, it was assessed at the meeting that imposing content change requests on developers by platforms may not be practically feasible, and that platforms might risk ceasing their operations in the Turkish market rather than undertaking such vague and open-ended obligations.”
TOGED stated its objection to this article due to its undefined and open-to-interpretation structure.
“We explicitly expressed the potential harm that could result from imposing direct or indirect obligations on game developers. Our view is that the regulations should be limited to defining the implementation principles of the three main articles mentioned above. We shared our concern that a broader scope could easily lead to the banning of games and game content in the future, and could also cause game platforms to hesitate to appoint representatives in Türkiye. The authorities clearly considered our feedback on this matter and informed us that the article in question would be re-evaluated, for which we thank them,” TOGED said.
On March 4, game developers, academics, and publishers met with the government for a long day of talks. And on Friday, Simay Dinc of Recontact and Women in Games Türkiye welcomed the director general of National Technology and Artificial Intelligence at the Ministry of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Türkiye.
“We are still discussing and still working on it,” Dinc said.
Mert Balkan, a 23-year-old game developer in Antalya, Türkiye, said in a message to GamesBeat that he was deeply concerned about what is happening.
“While I am writing this, new updates are still coming in, which is deeply troubling. Everything is happening extremely fast. Government decisions are being made overnight, while people are asleep, without any public discussion,” Balkan said.
He noted that for many years, Türkiye has imposed various restrictions on platforms used by young people under the justification of “supervision” and “age restrictions.” The stated reason for these measures is the claim that such platforms are harmful to children. However, in practice, this approach has gradually led to the incremental banning of platforms under the guise of regulation.
YouTube was blocked for this reason for a period in 2015 and it was only recently restored after a lot of effort. Today, Wattpad, Roblox, and Discord are inaccessible in the country unless a VPN is used. Discord was shut down on October 9, 2024, allegedly because of regulations around age control and parental safeguards. While there were rumors it would happen, there was no public discourse. Balkan fears that the same thing is happening now with Steam.
“The response has increasingly been broad restrictions or bans,” Balkan said. “This approach affects not only entertainment platforms but also essential tools for game development, communication, and international collaboration, raising serious concerns for the creative and technology sectors in Türkiye.”
Andreea Gajda, a PR/marketing executive at a game company, said that game developers from the region are now having success in the Steam charts, since player counts in Türkiye are higher now.
“Customers are buying, playing and supporting the games of Türkiye game studios. There’s a higher rate of retention as well on games, no matter if they are PC, mobile or console games. And PC games have the highest retention,” Gajda said. “Banning Steam from Türkiye will lead to a massive drop, even for the economy. What will happen for game developers ,and their dreams? Where will they share their games?”
Evidently the government doesn’t trust external guidelines for child safety such as PEGI or the ESRB.
Valve in particular has been asked to establish a representative office in Türkiye. That kind of request preceded the bans on Roblox and Discord in the past. The Ministry of Family and Social Policies, which is directly affiliated with the government, may establish a dedicated department to review video games, Balkan said.
He said this body would identify titles it considers “problematic” or “objectionable” based on its own criteria. At this stage, the outcome is highly uncertain, and there is little clarity about how decisions would be made or enforced.
He also said the government could gain the authority to significantly slow down the bandwidth, by up to 90%, of major platforms and game launchers such as Steam and Epic Games, effectively limiting access without issuing a formal ban.
In the final stage, games deemed problematic could be fully restricted or banned from access within Türkiye. Balkan said he is worried every game could face a ban because there is no transparency of the process applying this rule, games such as; The Sims, The Witcher, Baldur’s Gate, Human Fall Flat, GTA V, or the upcoming title GTA VI. If those games contain scenes that could be deemed “problematic” or “unacceptable” from the government’s perspective, they could get banned.
“Global platforms such as Steam are essential for Turkish developers to showcase their games, reach international players, and participate in global events. If these platforms are restricted, slowed down, or forced to leave the market, developers would lose direct access to global distribution channels,” Balkan said.
This would discourage foreign investment, weaken trust from international publishers, and ultimately slow the growth of Türkiye’s game development ecosystem instead of supporting it, he said.
On February 3, in the government’s official circular, they announced the subject of “Action plan for empowering children in the digital world (2026-2030)”. The government officially states that the goal is to protect children, enforce age restrictions, and increase oversight of digital platforms.
Turkish game journalists and enthusiasts are going t Ankara to try to find more information. The government has stated before that requiring a local office allows authorities to hold companies legally accountable, communicate directly with them, and enforce regulations more efficiently. If compliance fails, then the ban can happen.
The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) plays a key role, working in coordination with the Ministry of Family and Social Policies.
Here’s the full statement from Olek:
Hope you are doing great. I am the Head of the Advisory Board of TOGED, the Turkish representative of EGDF, and the founder of Turkiye’s longest-running video game magazine Oyungezer. I just read your article about the new regulations in Turkiye.
First of all, thank you for your interest in the issue, for your support, and for quoting our public statement, which I wrote. That said, I need to point out that the piece contains a large number of factual errors and some mistranslations.
Our public statement is now two weeks old, and there have already been further developments since then. The main problem, however, is that large parts of the article appear to rely on a letter you received from a young developer who is clearly very concerned but does not seem well informed about the actual content, scope, and likely application of the draft law. Beyond our public statement, I have personally recorded more than five hours of video content with popular creators to explain the extent, content, and risks of this law in detail. I wish he had spared time to watch those.
We fully understand the anxiety among both gamers and developers. That is natural whenever a new regulation is discussed. But that anxiety has also led to a wave of misinformation, much of it driven by clickbait coverage. As members of the press, we have a responsibility to present facts even when we also address public concerns.
Let me point out some of the key inaccuracies in the article. If you would like to discuss the matter in more depth, I would be very happy to do so.
Roblox and Discord are not banned because of their content or services. Courts blocked them due to two separate criminal cases involving those platforms. In fact, this new law could potentially help create the legal framework for them to reopen, although both cases are complicated precisely because there was no proper legal framework before. Roblox is in full compliance now, but Discord does not seem to be.
There is no direct targeting of Steam or Epic Games Store. The aim of this law is not to limit or harm specific platforms. Framing this as governmental institutions having a hostile stance toward those platforms is simply not true. Turkiye is known for having some of the strongest incentives for game development (I did a long speech about that on PGC San Francisco), and there is a clear sensitivity among institutions to avoid harming that ecosystem. In broad terms, it introduces regulations that are quite similar to those seen in other countries.
The passage stating that “the government also disclosed additional clauses which create a framework that grants public institutions a fairly broad scope of authority and, without clearly defined boundaries, could allow for regulations to be made through decrees” is based on a statement we made two weeks ago. That part has already been revised. We do not consider the issue fully resolved yet, but it carries significantly less risk now than before. Even on our side, this is only a risk assessment. The draft technically opens the possibility for such outcomes, but it does not contain any clear or direct targeting of that kind.
The claim that “government decisions are being made overnight, while people are asleep, without any public discussion” is simply untrue. We have been in discussions with institutions for years about the possibility of a legal framework in this area. As for this specific draft, we have been in close contact with them for the past seven weeks. The law itself is still roughly two to three weeks away, and we have several meetings planned with ministries and the relevant parliamentary commission before it can become law. So far, we have already managed to revise four points in the draft, and we have six more on our list. Negotiations are ongoing.
The statement that “Discord was shut down on October 9, 2024, allegedly because of regulations around age control and parental safeguards” is also false, for the reasons explained above.
I also do not know who Andreea Gajda is or why she is so concerned on our behalf. But the current draft does not contain bans. It contains a step-by-step process, and anything closer to a ban (90% traffic restriction) requires a minimum period of six months and two court orders. This is clearly designed as a gradual system. Even in the event of a serious traffic limitation, developers would have time to adapt and make the necessary preparations. Nobody is banning anything overnight through this law.
The claim that “evidently the government doesn’t trust external guidelines for child safety such as PEGI or the ESRB” is also incorrect. Turkiye already accepts PEGI in practice with de facto status. We are currently working to turn that into official status, and we are in active discussions with PEGI and Video Games Europe on this matter.
The statement that “Valve in particular has been asked to establish a representative office in Turkiye” is not true. The current draft does not require companies to open local offices. They could instead work with an existing local office or person on retainer, just as many companies already do in several regions. This isn’t particular to any platform, it applies to any platform with over 100K daily users.
The claim that “the Ministry of Family and Social Policies, which is directly affiliated with the government, may establish a dedicated department to review video games” is also false. There is nothing in the current draft that says this, and MoF has no such authority. (The part about a ministry being associated with the government is true though)
Likewise, the claim that “games deemed problematic could be fully restricted or banned” is not present in the draft itself. Our concern is that such an outcome could theoretically be enabled by future secondary regulations, and that is exactly one of the issues we are currently working to prevent.
The “Action Plan for Empowering Children in the Digital World (2026–2030)” does not directly concern us in the way suggested in the article. It is mainly a guideline for government institutions and is largely focused on parental education.
The statement that “Turkish game journalists and enthusiasts are going to Ankara to try to find more information” is also inaccurate. I have already written four detailed public statements, two press releases, and recorded more than five hours of video on the subject, therefore, no one needs to travel to find more information. I am the only journalist who has done that so far, and I have only done so because I work with TOGED and EGDF.
I am sorry to put it so directly, but it seems that you received a letter from a very concerned yet poorly informed young developer, and that this led to a piece containing substantial misinformation. I would be very glad to help clarify the situation properly.
I’ve attached a translated copy of the current draft version, but we are still in talks and anticipate further changes.
Best regards,
Tugbek Olek, cofounder of Setimedia
Head of Advisory Board / Game Developers Association of Turkiye
Head of International Relations Committee / Creative Turkiye