With the censorship madness continuing to spiral out of control, game developers are starting to bake it into the games themselves.
The censorship madness is continue to spiral out of control across the internet. Already, it is being implemented on Discord, Reddit, Bluesky, Roblox, XBox, itch.io, Steam, YouTube, and Spotify. The censorship has spiralled so out of control, discussions about national flags are being censored and younger people are being banned completely from platforms regardless of the content in question.
The kind of technology being deployed isn’t very good. Not only is it bad at detecting underage people, but it has suffered from data leaks and multiple data breaches as people who decide to be honest find their facial recognition scans, credit cards, and government ID falling into the wrong hands. So, it comes as no surprise that people are already fighting back against these systems using VPNs, video game characters, and fake IDs to defeat the censorship and surveillance technology.
One story that is floating around is what Rockstar Games is doing with age verification. There are rumours floating around that they are going to be baking age verification into the up and coming game, Grand Theft Auto VI, but the rumours also suggest that they are going to implement age verification into Grand Theft Auto Online. From Gaming Bible:
Ahead of the launch of GTA VI, details are emerging on the implementation of age verification for UK players, and further abroad.
With the harsher crackdown on images of sex and violence in front of young and impressionable players, GTA Online will soon require age verification to access the game.
Images showing mock-ups of how this will appear to players have appeared on Twitter, and come from long-time, trusted leaker, Tez2.
On the image shown, it’s clear to see the message, “Please verify your age to access online features.”
There are no details on when this will be implemented, or which countries it will arrive in.
In a second set of images, we can see an option to verify the age of the player, along with a screen that would supposedly show a QR code to take players through to an online verification website or app.
This comes amidst a wave of changes, particularly in the UK, where any adult content is held behind online verification.
To pass this step, users either need to provide proof that they are above the age of 18, or scan their face for it to be analysed.
While I haven’t played Grand Theft Auto Online, my understanding is that you can play it through XBox and Playstation. It is also my understanding that the game platforms like XBox are already going to be implement age verification of their store front as well. So, let’s say you want to play Grand Theft Online through your XBox series X/S. Would that mean you would have to submit your facial recognition scan first to Microsoft, then, once that gets confirmed, you would have to submit a separate scan to Rockstar after to play the game itself? How many age checks are you going to have to go through before you can just play the darn game anyway?
I mean, if I was a black hat hacker, I would be popping the champagne right now. There’s so many more juicy targets to go after and you really only need one major target to lift all that personal information from. After all, such a hack would be far from unprecedented.
While it is unclear how age verification surveillance technology would coordinate with other age verification on different gaming platforms, it seems that the censorship madness is continuing to spread.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.
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