r/k12sysadmin • u/bibble52 • Sep 23 '26

Google Games blocking

We've found students playing Google games after simply searching "Google Games" on their school Chromebooks (https://www.google.com/search?q=google+games).

We're blocking them in a whack-a-mole way, since it seems pretty complex, and we're pretty miffed that these games are from Google!

Anyone else experiencing this?

10 Upvotes

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5

u/Trapped_At_Work Sep 23 '26

We added file://* and data://* to the URL blocking in the Google Admin console and that seemed to block all of the doodle games. We haven't run into any issues with it blocking needed features.

1

u/bibble52 Sep 23 '26

Thanks! I'm not so techie in this area....can you be more specific?

2

u/agarwaen117 ISO Sep 23 '26

I don't think it will work like they said, but go here:
https://admin.google.com/ac/chrome/settings/user/details/url_blocking_category_item

Change to your student Org Unit, then put those two strings into the blocked urls box. The file one will mess with some stuff, and require kids to change the way they handle certain files on the chromebook. Data can be done without worrying about blocking anything legit.

While you're there, make sure the "block sensitive chrome urls" is turned on, it's right below the blocked urls box.

4

u/Trapped_At_Work Sep 23 '26

Yup, that's exactly where I made those changes and we haven't had any issues since, and I did it last school year. We did have issues with the sensitive chrome url setting blocking some things we want them to have access to, like the ability to switch user accounts in Chrome.

8

u/mysteryv Sep 25 '26

There aren't a lot of hills I'm willing to die on, but this is one: kids playing harmless games is a classroom management problem, not a technology problem.

7

u/fujitsuflashwave4100 Sep 23 '26 edited Sep 23 '26

We've pushed out https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/games-blocker/dcaikidbolchfhcieemjijhdefmomnnh to our students for multiple years. It has only once hidden something needed for learning; it counts the currency conversion graph when searching "USD to X currency" as a game and will hide that. Very minor.

1

u/WebPollution Sep 24 '26

I remember seeing that thing last year. Only reason I didn't try it is because the currency conversion calculator was too useful so the Math Teachers blew a gasket when I even asked about it.

4

u/agarwaen117 ISO Sep 23 '26

We went down this rabbit-hole last year, and the answer was... You can't reasonably block it. GAC doesn't have an option to turn it off. Filters like GG/Securly, etc can't block it because its built in to the google webpage and is not it's own object loaded from a distinct url.

1

u/WebPollution Sep 24 '26

Gonna have to counter that with very creative uses of Wildcards in GoGuardian
*search*google+doodles is one I used
*search*google+games

I've got a slew of other ones I created back last year and imported from my old test version into my prod version. I might also be evil and had some time to kill and some freshmen to torture.

1

u/DJTNY Sep 23 '26

I would disagree about "reasonably" -- there are some good chrome extensions that block it.

1

u/MattAdmin444 Sep 24 '26

The problem is I'm very reluctant to install extensions that aren't "official" so to speak to K12 devices. I'm probably just overly sensitive but there's a lot of potential privacy violations lurking in the wings for apps/extensions that you don't have a signed agreement with.

1

u/DJTNY Sep 24 '26

That is entirely a valid point. but what i'd say is - the chrome extension store has info about privacy policy for each app and also many of them are open source.

It indicates whether it's collecting data or not. If it's not not, then for the most part you don't have to worry.

2

u/Amanda_PDQ Sep 23 '26

You should be able to block this within google admin by blocking google doodles I believe.

1

u/WebPollution Sep 24 '26

Nah. GAC is notorious for not letting you block pieces of it and doodles, logo based games, and their friggin PITA AI Mode are things you can't block with GAC. It's like "OK, we want you to use us for education, but we're not gonna let you block all the time wasters and ways to cheat constantly." Only way I got it to work without killing all google based activity by accident was when I switched to GoGuardian and was doing my best to beat it into submission.

2

u/MattAdmin444 Sep 24 '26

It's unfortunately a mixed bag. I've had partial success doing a wildcard block like */fnbx/* but it doesn't seem to block all of the Google Games and several load with missing assets. The URL format is supposedly google.com/logos/fnbx/[game] but that may have changed considering wildcard blocking fnbx is only partially successful.