Are you a Steam user?  Are you seeing warnings that “Content in this product may not be appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work.”  Do they annoy you?  Do you want them to just go away?  If so, read on.

Due to retarded, Nanny State, ESRB policy, Valve is now required to put unavoidable obstacles in the way of users of the Steam store whenever they attempt to access a game (app/whatever) that some precious snowflake, somewhere in the universe, could conceivably be offended by.  They are collectively called “Age Gates” and the one that forces you to put in your date of birth has been around for quite a while.  Not content to annoy people that way, they now are pushing even more warnings for even milder content. /facepalm

The latest warning page looks like this and appears in front of ~10% of the items in my Discovery Queue:

I got sick of seeing that page and clicking on the Continue button repeatedly, so I wrote a single-line GreaseMonkey script to do it for me.  (First World problems — I know.)

Here’s the code:

// ==UserScript==
// @description Effectively presses the "Continue" button on steam app pages that issue the following annoying warning:
// "Content in this product may not be appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work."
// @include http://store.steampowered.com/app/*/agecheck*
// @name Appropriate content warning bypass for Steam apps
// @namespace http://localhost
// @version 1
// ==/UserScript==

HideAgeGate(window.location.pathname.split('/')[2]);

All of the lines that start with // are actually comments or configuration directives.  The @include line limits the script to running on only the warning page — this script does not run on any other page.  The HideAgeGate function is passed the appNumber from the URI and then hides the gate for that app — which is exactly what pressing the Continue button does.

If you already have Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey installed, then great — copy the above, create a new script, paste, save and you’re done.  No modification required.

If you don’t know what Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey are, they are extensions that allow you to create and run Javascript scripts that modify how pages appear or work or automate certain tasks.  Greasemonkey started by doing this on Firefox.  Tampermonkey lets you do it on Chrome.  You need to have Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey installed before you can upload and use the script (obviously).

The operation of the script is entirely passive — once you’ve added it to Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey you don’t need to do a thing.  The script detects if you are on that annoying warning page and, if so, effectively clicks the button for you.  You’ll see the warning page come up for a fraction of a second and then go away.  The actual app page that you wanted will then be displayed.

This script was developed and tested on OS X with Chrome and Tampermonkey installed.  YMMV but it’s so basic it should work just about everywhere.

Note:  This script does not do anything on the original age gate — the one that asks you to enter your date of birth.  Other scripts already exist that do that — just do a web search for “steam age check bypass” and follow your nose.

Enjoy!