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// Legal

Minimum-Age &
Children's Policy

Last updated: July 1, 2026  ·  Effective: July 1, 2026
// This policy sets one minimum age for VLStudio, replacing two earlier documents that stated the rule differently. It also discloses plainly that no age is captured at signup today, which is a product gap this policy depends on closing.

Contents

1. Reconciling an Earlier Contradiction

2. Minimum Age: 13

3. Parental or Guardian Consent, Ages 13 to Majority

4. No Age Is Captured or Verified at Signup Today

5. Real-Money Purchases: 18+

6. UK Age-Appropriate Design Code

7. COPPA: The Program, Not Just a Screen

8. If You Believe a Child Has Used the Service

9. Changes to This Policy

10. Contact

1. Reconciling an Earlier Contradiction

Our Terms of Service previously implied a minimum age of 13, while our Privacy Policy used a framing drawn from the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) that speaks only to children under 13. Those two framings are not the same rule, and reading them side by side was contradictory. This policy is the single, consistent statement of VLStudio's age rules, and it is incorporated by reference into our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy, Section 17, both of which now point here rather than restating the rule themselves.

2. Minimum Age: 13

The minimum age to create a VLStudio account or use the Service in any capacity is 13 years old. This single number is chosen because it sits consistently across the three regimes that matter most to VLStudio's user base:

13 is therefore the floor under all three regimes. Because GDPR Article 8 allows individual EU member states to set their own age between 13 and 16, a user in a member state with a higher statutory age (for example 16) may need parental consent under that state's law even though they clear VLStudio's own floor of 13; this policy sets our platform-wide minimum, and does not override a stricter age set by your own country's law.

3. Parental or Guardian Consent, Ages 13 to Majority

A user between 13 years old and the age of majority in their jurisdiction (typically 18, though this varies) may use the Service only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. This consent requirement exists specifically to cover the age band where GDPR Article 8, a stricter member-state age setting, or general contract-capacity rules in the user's jurisdiction would otherwise require it.

A verifiable mechanism for capturing and recording that parental consent does not exist today; see Section 4. Until it does, this requirement is a stated rule that the product cannot yet enforce, and we say so rather than implying otherwise.

4. No Age Is Captured or Verified at Signup Today

Today, account signup collects only an email address, a password, a username, and a role. No date of birth or age field exists anywhere in the signup flow, and nothing verifies a user's age at any point after signup either. This means the age floor and parental-consent requirement stated in this policy are not currently enforced by the product; they are a stated rule without a technical gate behind it. This is a real product gap. An age gate needs to be built, at signup at minimum, before this policy is enforceable rather than aspirational, and we are flagging it as a required fix rather than describing an age gate that does not exist.

Until an age gate ships, VLStudio relies on the user's own representation, made by using the Service, that they meet the minimum age in Section 2 and, if between 13 and the age of majority, have the consent described in Section 3. We reserve the right to close any account we learn does not meet these requirements, consistent with Terms of Service, Section 10.

5. Real-Money Purchases: 18+

Regardless of the general 13-plus floor in Section 2, you must be at least 18 years old to make a real-money purchase on VLStudio, including the VLS-PRO subscription and Power Tokens. This higher floor exists because VLStudio does not have a workable verifiable-parental-consent flow for a minor's payment today: without one, allowing a user between 13 and 18 to spend real money directly would outrun what we can actually verify or support if a parent later disputes the charge. See our Subscription & Billing Terms and our Virtual Currency & Tokens Terms, both of which incorporate this 18-plus requirement by reference.

6. UK Age-Appropriate Design Code

The UK's Age-Appropriate Design Code (the Children's Code, issued under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018) applies to online services likely to be accessed by children, and sets standards for defaults, profiling, and data minimization that go beyond a simple age gate. VLStudio Web has public profiles and user-generated content (community posts, comments, marketplace listings) that are reachable by a minor between 13 and 18 using the Service under Section 3, whether or not that minor is signed in. That reach is enough to engage the Code, and this policy flags it as needing a design review rather than asserting compliance we have not yet assessed: default privacy settings, profile visibility to minors, and any behavioral nudges in the product all need to be reviewed against the Code's standards, not just the age floor in this document.

7. COPPA: The Program, Not Just a Screen

If VLStudio ever knowingly serves users under 13, or is later found to be directed at that age group, COPPA requires an operator program, not a single consent screen. This section describes what that program consists of, as a commitment to implement rather than a description of something already built:

VLStudio's current age floor of 13 is intended to keep the Service outside COPPA's core under-13 population once the age gate in Section 4 is built and enforced. Until it is built, VLStudio has no reliable way to know whether an under-13 user has created an account, which is itself a reason the age gate is a priority, not an optional enhancement.

8. If You Believe a Child Has Used the Service

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13, or a child between 13 and the age of majority without your consent, has created a VLStudio account or provided us personal information, contact us using the details in Section 10. We will investigate and, where appropriate, delete the account and associated personal information, consistent with the deletion scope described in our Privacy Policy, Section 15.

9. Changes to This Policy

We will update this policy once the age gate described in Section 4 and the verifiable parental-consent mechanism described in Section 3 ship, and once the UK Age-Appropriate Design Code review described in Section 6 is complete. See our Terms Versioning Policy for how material changes to any VLStudio legal document are announced.

10. Contact