Browser Games Despite a Block: How Game Sites Get Around Filters

You want gaming time to stay limited. You blocked the game portal, and the next day the game runs anyway. It comes from a quirk of browser games, not from a mistake in your setup.

A filter like the Internet-Schutzschild works with addresses. It blocks what is on its list and lets everything else through. But a website rarely consists of one single address. The game itself, its images and sounds often come from delivery servers (CDN, content delivery network) that carry a completely different name than the portal your child came through.

In our own family network the portal was blocked and games still loaded through their provider's delivery servers. Since we blocked those servers, these games no longer load through the detour at our home (as of the day of the change).

1. First settle the question: do you want to block it? Times and places for games can be agreed with your child, for example in the family media agreement. A block that follows an agreement is received differently from one that suddenly appears. Agree an exit point beforehand, for example after one round or one level: stopping mid-game creates frustration, as Pro Juventute also stresses. And ask your child to show you the game and what is fun about it.
2. Look at what the game requests. In the browser, press F12 to open the developer tools and pick the "Network" tab. Let the game load and note which addresses the big files come from. With your own filter at home you see the same addresses in its log.
3. Block what belongs only to the game. Addresses that exist only for these games can be blocked in AdGuard Home with a custom rule. The syntax is ||address-of-the-server.example^ (replace it with the real address). Such rules can also be set for single devices only, provided the filter recognises the devices.
4. Don't block what other sites share. With one provider, games and third-party sites were served from the same general server. Blocking it would have broken more than it helped. We blocked only the addresses that belong exclusively to the games.
5. Test on the child's device. Try it yourself before you call it done. And look again after a week: game portals change their delivery addresses and new ones appear all the time. If you have to catch up every week, that is a signal for a conversation, not for more blocks.

The Internet-Schutzschild's family filter doesn't block games. It blocks adult sites, fraud and malware. If you want custom blocks, use your own filter at home. How that works is described in the Home Guide. Important: rules for single devices only work if the filter recognises the device. Why that sometimes goes wrong is in Why Parental Controls Sometimes Don't Work.

Blocked sites are a lever, not a lock. Children find other portals, play at friends' houses or on the phone over mobile data, where the filter doesn't work. So the block comes with the conversation: how long do we play, what do you like about it, what comes after the game? And: what would you rather do if the game doesn't work? How to build rules your child backs is in Why Bans Don't Work.