As many users on Steam have likely experienced， navigating to a game with mature content often triggers a prompt to enter your birthdate to confirm you’re of legal age. This verification process is intended to comply with content rating regulations and protect younger audiences.
However， a common frustration arises when， even after logging in and repeatedly setting your birth year， the same age verification prompt continues to appear. This persistent need to re-enter your birthdate can disrupt the browsing experience and feel unnecessarily repetitive.
Fortunately， a solution has emerged. A Reddit user named shimoris has developed a browser extension designed to bypass this recurring age verification step. This development offers a welcome reprieve for players tired of the constant prompts.
The underlying mechanism of this plugin is quite clever: it stores your birthdate information directly in Steam’s local storage. By doing this， it effectively “remembers” your age， eliminating the need for you to re-enter it every time you encounter a restricted title. This approach leverages a common web development technique for persistent user preferences.
This helpful plugin is freely available for download on Github. It’s important to note， however， that it will only function within a web browser environment and is not compatible with the standalone Steam client application.
The persistent nature of this age verification might stem from how Steam has historically handled user birthdate data. Valve’s own Gabe Newell， often referred to as “G胖” (G-fat) in Chinese gaming communities， has previously commented on this issue， revealing that backend data indicated a staggering 93% of Steam users reported being born on January 1st. This unusual statistic had been a long-standing puzzle for the company.
The most plausible explanation for this anomaly is likely due to the default setting for birthdate entry. When players were prompted to provide their birthdate， the system may have defaulted to January 1st. Consequently， many users， perhaps out of convenience or a lack of concern for accurate historical data， simply accepted the default and submitted it without making a specific selection for their actual birth year. This user behavior， compounded by the platform’s default settings， likely contributed to the skewed data and the subsequent implementation of more stringent， albeit occasionally annoying， age verification checks.
