Ahead of the release of GTA 6 next year, it looks like Rockstar Games is about to implement age verification checks for GTA Online, as leaked by the well-known Rockstar Games reporter / insider Tez2 on social media.
Tez2 first talked about this a few days ago, highlighting various lines of code that mentioned age verification checks. They advised at the time that it could apply to GTA Online generally, or perhaps just certain features within the game.
Then, a few hours ago, they shared an actual preview of how age verification will look in GTA Online, revealing various PC-based screenshots where the player is told to "verify your age to access online features".
Here's a look at two of those screenshots up-close (shared directly from Twitter):
Now, it's worth keeping in mind that we don't have all the details about age verification in GTA Online (and quite possibly GTA 6) yet, and Tez2 advises they have "no idea" which specific regions will be targeted by this aside from the UK which will "definitely be the first".
The reason for this is likely because the UK has just implemented new rules forcing "all sites and apps that allow pornography to have strong age checks in place" - with verification methods including credit card checks, photo ID-matching and even "email-based age estimation".
In other words, Rockstar Games possibly has no alternative but to include age verification in order to keep providing GTA Online access in the UK, and it'll be interesting to see how it's implemented - if it goes live in the near future.