PSA: GTA Online Still Works Without ID Checks in Australia

The deadline came and went. As of March 9, 2026, Australia's Age-Restricted Material Codes officially require online games rated R18+ to implement age assurance measures before granting access to users.

The penalties for non-compliance can reach AU$49.5 million per breach. The law is, or should be, in effect, but Australian players can still log into Grand Theft Auto Online without being asked to verify their age in any way.

We tested this ourselves at GTA BOOM. We received no prompts, no QR codes, no government ID requests, no facial age estimation, no credit card check, nothing.

You launch Grand Theft Auto V, select GTA Online, and you are in Los Santos, just as you were last week and every week before that. The dormant age assurance code that dataminer Tez2 found in the game's files last August, complete with "Verify Age" screens and toggle options for online access, Snapmatic uploads, and store access, remains just as dormant for now.

Australian outlet Vooks conducted its own testing on March 9 and found the same result across multiple platforms and titles. Yakuza 0: Director's Cut on the Nintendo eShop could be purchased and its online mode accessed without any age verification.

Other R18+ games showed no changes either. Vooks reported that "not much seems to have changed at all" despite the law technically being enforceable.

This is not necessarily surprising, and it is not necessarily a sign that anyone is deliberately ignoring the law. What it more likely reflects is the sheer scale of what Australia is attempting to do, and how long it realistically takes to roll something like this out across countless platforms that serve millions of users in dozens of configurations.

GTA Online operates across the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as well as the PC and older consoles. Each platform has its own storefront (or several, in the case of PC), its own account system, its own regional infrastructure, and its own relationship with age verification providers. Facilitating legal compliance across such a staggering ecosystem is a herculean task.

Rockstar's tuneable system, which is what videotechuk_ and others previously indicated would be used to activate the age checks server-side, can flip features on by region without a client-side patch, but integrating a third-party age verification provider into that flow, one that meets Australia's standard of being "accurate, robust, fair and reliable" as eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has specified, is not the same as toggling a weekly bonus.

The verification system has to work across consoles and PCs, across different account types, across varying levels of parental control already in place, and comply with Australian privacy law. It also has to be ready for a game that could very well still have hundreds of thousands of active Australian players. If something goes wrong with the verification flow, if the provider experiences downtime, if legitimate adult players are incorrectly flagged, or if the system creates friction that drives a measurable portion of the player base away from the game, the financial and reputational consequences are significant.

Rockstar has every incentive to get this right the first time, particularly with Grand Theft Auto 6 on track for November 19, 2026, and whatever framework it deploys for the current GTA Online serving as the template for the next one.

The age verification requirement isn't going away. The law is on the books, the penalties are real, and Rockstar's own preparation, visible in the code Tez2 uncovered, confirms that the company is prepared for this. It's coming, even if it's taking its sweet time. The question is now when the switch gets flipped, and how smoothly the transition goes when it does.

For now, if you are in Australia and you play GTA Online, nothing about your experience has changed, but it will not last forever.

Speaking of GTA Online, you have another reason to subscribe to GTA+ after Rockstar added NBA 2K26 to its growing roster of titles.