A study found platforms skip age checks entirely, and Rockstar Games has not activated its dormant verification code before Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19.
Researchers found that Australia's world-first teen social media ban is failing at the very first step, with platforms not asking for any age proof at all on test accounts that declared themselves as 16. If the checks are not even working on social media, it says a lot about what to expect when they reach Grand Theft Auto VI.
The study comes after Australia passed sweeping age-verification rules meant to keep under-16s off social media and under-18s out of adult-rated online games. For games, this includes Grand Theft Auto Online, which carries an R18+ rating, and by extension GTA 6's online mode when it arrives. The idea is that you would have to prove you are old enough, through a government ID, a credit card, or a facial age scan, rather than just typing in a fake birthday.
However, this doesn't seem to be fully implemented, at least for now. A team of software testers opened 50 accounts declaring their age as 16 after the law took effect, and on nine of the ten covered platforms, not a single one was asked to prove anything. The accounts just worked. The researchers pointed out that the whole debate had focused on whether photo-based age-scanning tech is accurate, while missing that the first step, the system flagging a potentially underage user for a check at all, is not happening.
The system is supposed to work in layers. The initial layer guesses whether a user might be underage based on their behavior and account signals, and only then escalates to a formal ID or face check. If that first layer never flags anyone, the whole thing collapses, because a user can just enter a false birthday and sail right through without ever hitting the tougher checks. It does not matter how good your face-scanning tech is if you never ask anyone to use it. Meta, for its part, pushed back, saying the test accounts were declared as over the minimum age and might not have behaved like real under-16 users would, and the regulator says it remains confident platforms have the tools they need.
This connects directly to what we have documented. Australian players can still load into Los Santos exactly as before, with no ID prompt, no QR code, no facial scan. It's not like the system isn't in place either. Rockstar has already built the age-assurance functionality, the dormant code was found in the game files by dataminer Tez2 last year, but the company has not flipped the switch.
Ultimately, what the study really exposes is how genuinely hard it is to implement age verification across enormous platforms serving millions of users. This is not necessarily anyone deliberately flouting the law. It is the sheer difficulty of building something that reliably catches underage users without wrongly locking out adults or trampling privacy. Australia is attempting something no country has pulled off at scale, and the study is evidence that the technology and the rollout are not there yet.
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The failure of the social media checks might actually be good news for GTA 6 players in Australia, at least in the short term. If the government cannot make age verification stick on the biggest social platforms in the world, the pressure and the practical template for enforcing it on a video game get weaker. Rockstar has every reason to watch this closely. Why would it rush to activate a friction-heavy ID check on Australian GTA 6 players when the regulator is struggling to enforce the same principle on Instagram and TikTok, and has publicly signaled its enforcement focus is elsewhere? The study effectively tells every R18+ game publisher that the enforcement environment is soft right now.
There is a real tension underneath all of this that is worth sitting with, though. The law was written to protect children, and whatever you think of its execution, the study showing 16-year-olds sailing through, including one who served adult content on another platform, is not a victory to celebrate.
To be fair, the law still applies to GTA 6's online mode when it launches November 19, and Rockstar's dormant system suggests it is prepared to comply whenever it has to. It's just that enforcement across the board is patchy at best, and this study is another sign that Australia's grand plan is not yet translating into practice.
For now, if you are an adult player in Australia, nothing about your access has changed, nor will anything change if you're thinking about an incoming ban, and this study suggests it may not change as smoothly or as soon as the law intended.
