GTA 6 reports and rumours
GTA 6 nearly got refused a rating in South Korea, report says
Report, not confirmed by Rockstar
What is being reported
South Korea's rating board first split 3-3 between Adults Only and refusing GTA 6 a rating, then passed it as Adults Only by 8 votes to 1 on 16 October, Inven Global reported on 12 November from the board's meeting minutes.
This is a report, not an announcement from Rockstar. We track whether it turns out true in the claims register; when Rockstar confirms or denies it, this page gets an update and the label above changes.
Korean players who worried that GTA 6 would be refused a rating had good reason to. At its first review on 10 September, the country’s Game Content Rating Board (GCRB) split 3-3 between an Adults Only rating and refusing the game a rating altogether, Inven Global reported on 12 November from the board’s meeting minutes. A refusal effectively blocks a game’s release in Korea altogether.
The minutes give the timeline. The application went in on 1 September. After the tie, the board postponed its decision with a recommendation for modification and asked the publisher whether it intended to make changes. Because of security concerns, a playable build only reached the board on 28 September. The second review on 2 October was postponed again, for “sufficient gameplay examination”, and a meeting on 8 October was cancelled for lack of a quorum. On 16 October the third review settled it: Adults Only, 8 votes to 1, with the descriptors Sensuality, Violence, Crime, Drugs and Language.
Nudity, not violence
According to Inven Global, “the reason the game came close to refusal was not violence, but sensuality”: the frequent background appearance of male genital nudity without any sexual context. On violence, crime and drugs, members found the game not significantly different from GTA 5. The board’s researcher reported that the nudity mostly appeared as one-off mission backgrounds and did not lead to sexual interactions. Members also raised that South Korea would have been the only country to refuse the game while 10 overseas boards had already given it an adult rating.
Ratings elsewhere carry similar labels. The ESRB lists Nudity and Strong Sexual Content among its descriptors, and the UK Xbox Store shows PEGI 18 with Sex among its descriptors; both are on our age rating page. Japan’s CERO Z rating, which GTA BOOM says has no icon for sexual content, is in our report on the Japanese build.
What is still open
Inven Global says the documents do not reveal how the recommendation for modification from the first review was handled. So whether the Korean version differs from the rest of the world is not known. Neither the GCRB nor Rockstar has commented on the minutes in the sources we checked.
Playing in Korea? PlayStation Korea’s own blog puts the PS5 release on 19 November, and the Adults Only rating means it is for adults there. The claim and its status are in our claims register.
Where it stands now
Where this comes from
Who says it, below. A source marked reported is someone else's account, not Rockstar's; we name it so you can weigh it yourself.
- Inven Global: 'GTA 6' Came Close to Rating Refusal in South Korea
- ESRB — Grand Theft Auto VI rating
- Xbox Store (UK) — Grand Theft Auto VI
- PlayStation.Blog 한국어 — 기다림은 끝났다! PS5용 Grand Theft Auto VI 론칭 캠페인 시작
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