13/01/2025 UPDATE:

We will no longer be performing credit-card based age verification. We can now do this via your mobile number.

Yeah crazy right? We’re glad about this too. We’ll be implmenting this as soon as possible, but in short you’ll just be required to enter your mobile number to receive a one-time code to age verify.

FULL POST BELOW

Hello! It’s 2026?! It’s time for some community notes!

AEGIS KINGDOMS IS CHANGING

Without rambling, the games industry is changing in the UK. We have had to make some changes to AEGIS Kingdoms. Some are good, some are compromises.

Now the long version below.

The Online Safety Act (2023) has made it an interesting time for indie developers making multiplayer games. This is because new legislation has added a lot of caution to specific, foundational features in MMOs. For example chatboxes, whispers, party chat and guild chat etc.

The OSA ruling emphasises that we must conduct highly accurate age assurance if there is a risk of children (users under the age of 18 in the UK) being exposed to harmful content, such as another user instructing the minor to ‘harm themselves’, or instructional information on crafting weapons (even if fictional, but can be translated to real life).

This behaviour is unacceptable & not welcome in our community, as you know. However online spaces, up until recently, come with a risk of experiencing toxic behaviour due to the nature of free will in human beings. Simply put – we can, and will be, horrible to one another when we want to be even with strict rules on acceptable behaviour.

However, the OSA makes us legally and financially liable for not protecting users (minors) from being exposed to this content from the get go. Larger studios may be able to weather such fines, but it would destroy us. Due to the risk of exposure (yes, from chatboxes), we need to do one of a few things:

• Remove ALL features that risk content, deemed by Ofcom (UK regulator), harmful to minors. This would mean removing most of the social features from AEGIS Kingdoms, as well as some actual content due to themes. (Crafting a weapon would need to be reduced down to basics as utilising historically accurate weapon parts to forge a sword counts as ‘instructional’ and could be used in the real world to build a weapon, for example).

• Or implement a system that allows us to identify country of origin accurately for all users, and segregate / limit access to minors to that content until successfully and highly accurately age verified.

• Or keep everything, but make it adult only. We’ll still need to age verify our users.

None of these are great, because all choices ultimately impact our users and/or the game. If we remove all the content, it guts the game entirely. Who’d want to play a social MMO without the social aspect? We play multiplayer games to connect with each other. Taking away the very features that enables us to do that doesn’t make any sense.

Likewise we simply do not have the resources to implement such a complex system for segregating a portion of our users, especially in a way that that can be scrutinized under law with risk of serious financial repercussions if we got it wrong.

Finally, it doesn’t make any financial sense for an ‘MMO’ to need to age verify all its users. Typically multiplayer games have an overhead and need a good amount of concurrent users. Whilst our overhead is significantly lower due to the much smaller scope of AK, oftentimes age verification is significant deterrent for a lot of players.

The gaming community is rightly annoyed that they have to keep uploading sensitive, personal data (IDs, pictures of their faces) to companies who are not all that secure. This is simply not a good plan for this project in its current state because it wouldn’t get the footfall required, especially when there are competitor products with less aggro for playing (if we are going to be candid about this).

So a solution was found. AEGIS Kingdoms is becoming an ‘RPMMO’.

AEGIS Kingdoms will be changing into a fully focused ‘RPMMO’, away from traditional gameplay mechanics in favour of roleplay focused gameplay mechanics.

• This takes the pressure off us trying to compete with bigger studios / MMOS. Not that we particularly were (being realistic about it), but it entirely removes it from the table. It’s made AEGIS Kingdoms a more realistic project.

• It means AEGIS Kingdoms will be something new, fun and explorative. It’ll be in a space of its own and we’re looking forward to where it takes us.

• It now allows us to work on something that is not as demanding mechanically, meaning more time can be spent on making the world immersive, not trying to add new features for the sake of staying relevant.

• It reignites a passion for why I got into game development: to craft worlds and write stories for people to be immersed in. Not that AK in it’s previous form didn’t, but now I can focus a lot more on the story, which is mainly a personal bonus.

As such, we’re calling it “AEGIS Kingdoms: Rebels of Camelot”, you’ll see more branding for that coming over 2026.

So what is an RPMMO?

It is an MMO dedicated entirely to roleplay, and aimed at the roleplay community.

This is a new-ish genre that has it’s roots from ‘RP realms’ traditionally found in MMOs and the likes. Have you ever seen a World of Warcraft realm (or other MMO realm/world) that’s tagged as RP (instead of PvP or Raids)? That’s for their roleplay community. Players often spend time roleplaying rather than focusing on other elements of the game. It’s an immersive experience that allows players to control their characters and actions alongside others in a way that fits the world.

An RPMMO takes that idea of an ‘RP realm’ (traditionally used in other MMOS as a ‘bolt on’ feature), and makes it the main star by merging it with the skills of dedicated game development to create a true roleplaying environment where the features of the game are to exclusively support roleplay. To our knowledge, this may be a ‘first of its kind’ game.

It’s an exploratory process for us as well, but something we want to do right, providing an immersive, supportive and safe environment for the roleplay community.

AGE VERIFICATION CLARIFICATION

Under OSA, we still need to conduct age verification. We understand this is not what people want, but this is something we legally have to comply with.
We think that an adult only, age verified community is a safe environment for adults who want to enjoy a roleplay community without worry of experiences being ruined.

We will NOT be requiring pictures of your face, or IDs.

The quickest, and least intrusive way to verify adults (guidance by the UK Gov) is to perform a free credit-card check. (This requires you to have a credit card). This does NOT take a payment, it simply checks that the card is active (it may do a temporary £0.01 bill and then refund in some circumstances – no money should leave your account). Stripe performs this, we do not see your billing details. Stripe just tells us if it was a successful ‘transaction’ or not.

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CURRENT QUEST OBJECTIVE:

• 3D modelling. Like… Everything? Though mainly focusing on monsters at the moment.

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NOTEWORTHY NEWS:

• I’ve taken the last 9 months slow due to experiencing quite serious burnout, so it’s nice to be back. Part of this process has been reworking AEGIS Kingdoms into something more manageable, so that has been fun.

• I’ve been focusing on modelling monsters for AEGIS Kingdoms, to which (in varying states of completion) we’re up to a grand total of 236 unique-ish mobs thus far (there are a few of the same race but with unique, similar models). It’s just been nice to focus on the lore and has been a fun experience.

• The AEGIS Community has celebrated 7 years on 1st January 2026, which is amazing.

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COMMUNITY NOTES – 6th January 2026

• NEW ‘AEGIS KINGDOMS: REBELS OF CAMELOT’ DISCORD: A new, dedicated Discord has been created. All links to the old Discord have been updated and we will be signposting all new users towards the new™ Discord. This is because the ‘AEGIS Community’ is a separate thing, and as fun as it was having a joint space, both projects have outgrown each other.

• AEGIS FORUMS: The AEGIS forums will be where the majority of discussions take place, character applications and the likes. At the moment it’s locked down whilst age verification is being added (the mentioned Stripe credit-card check).

• AEGIS GAME STUDIOS WEBSITE: I’ve spent some time updating the website, including trialling a new font. If it’s absolutely horrendous to read, it’ll only be used for titles and we’ll go back to using a standard font for block text. Let me know your thoughts!