Age verification laws are coming, and they’re coming fast: as United Kingdom is starting to enforce its new Online Safety Act intended to protect minors from viewing inappropriate content, the law is starting to see far-reaching effects. Rockstar’s GTA Online is reportedly implementing an age verification system in response to the new law.
GTA Online Is Getting Age Verification
This is reported by X/Twitter user Tez2, who shared a screenshot containing lines of code referencing age checks. It is reported that this system will be rolled out “by region”, depending on local laws; if the user’s age is not verified, they will not be able to access GTA Online’s certain in-game features. It is worth noting that GTA’s primary developer, Rockstar North, is based in the UK, so establishing such system is now very much required under British’s new law.
It is safe to assume that the upcoming GTA 6 will have similar systems in place, especially as more countries are looking into similar age verification laws to protect child’s online safety. Of course, GTA Online is just one example – in UK, many website and online services now locks certain features behind an ‘age gate’ unless the user’s age is verified.
Currently, age verification is done in several ways (and even though different providers): some services requires national ID or other similar official documents, while platforms like social media primarily rely on usage patterns to approximate the user age, as a less privacy-invasive method of achieving the same goal.
So far, this new law has caused widespread concerns both inside and outside the UK; opposition pointed out that the lack of a common verification framework is a major privacy concern, and data may be compromised in several ways, including data breaches. It was further argued that the said data could potentially be abused by governments to conduct mass surveillance.
That said, there is a potential solution to solve this conundrum. Google recently announced it has open-sourced its Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) library that allows institutions to verify a user’s age status (i.e. over 18 years of age) without needing to know the exact age, through a simple true/false response. EU will be the first governing body to implement this new system in 2026, to enable age checks while keeping a user’s age information private.
Pokdepinion: Hopefully these are just early teething issues – ultimately, age checks may be a good thing since the web is way too manipulative these days, but verification must be done with privacy preserved as much as possible.
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