GTA6

[Theverysmolkitty]

Would I be unreasonable to think this game should be made to have both facial age checks and a credit card age check to help prevent young people accessing it?

I'm aware some parents will do this for their kids but I feel the games themselves are well known for being deeply misogynistic and it's very concerning that the female protagonist is highly likely to be subject to awful things and used for player gratification.

I don't think banning the game is right but in the world of MRAs,incels and Tate this game isn't going to help.

1. Yes, under 18 could mean anything under 18. Which is why actually banning everyone under 18 from accessing these things is not a sensible approach. Those who are not yet 18 but who are old enough to have the requisite agency and autonomy to want to access the age-gated product will be of an age where it’s entirely likely they’ll be “old enough” to safely enjoy the product and may benefit from it.

I don’t play video games but one of the biggest employers near me is a video game developer. I can’t imagine many people who go on to work in the industry have been sheltered from the most culturally significant video games until after their A levels. GTA6 is going to be the largest release of media ever. It has cost billions to produce. It is expected to make more money than any game, film, book or TV series before it.

On 2. I am making the point that there is a difference between reality and fiction. That we are more worried about social media and gaming and YouTube than things which can genuinely have a negative, lasting impact on the lives of teenagers. Can you really not think of your own time at school and the things that happened to you or your friends, or the stories you heard that happened to someone in your year? We seem to have forgotten about those dangers as a society and are now so focused on preventing 16 year olds from being online, that we aren’t looking at what some 16 year olds are actually doing in person.

I'm happy to accept that at the moment the prevailing attitude seems to be that I'm unreasonable but I wanted to discuss it and I did try to make sure both my thread title and opening post weren't deliberately goading (at least I thought they weren't).

I still think putting ages verification in wouldn't be a bad thing but as I said I'm happy to accept others disagree.

Ots an 18, I've played it in my gaming days, not only is it right that it's an 18 I'd also be seriously put off if I found out a man I was dating was a fan. It's a truly mysogynistic game and premise.

You let your younger kids play it don't you? And want to justify it?

Lol so there was absolutely no violence against women before the invention of the grand theft auto series and computer games?

When DS was at Primary school there were a frightening number of children playing GTA some as young as 6. School would frequently advise parents it wasn’t suitable. For some children it was quite obvious what they were being exposed to in the games they played at home with the games, language and attitude they showed in the playground.

So I would be in favour of ways of stopping children playing such games

....

Keep it civil folks this isn't an anti gaming thread or an attempt to lay VAWG at the foot of GTA it's about whether or not it should be subject to the OSA and age gating along with other 18+ games due to it's content.

I dislike GTA and find what I've heard of it misogynistic but I won't morally crusade that adults shouldn't be allowed to play it or that content I find offensive shouldn't exist.

See gif

I thought it was fairly obvious it was sarcasm tbh

Mumsnet must be turning into Reddit where we need to add /s at the end of our posts because people don’t understand sarcasm.

Frankly, you'd be better off age gating Love Island or MAFS and that kind of show if you want to cut down on offensive, misogynistic content that actually influences young people.

I know loads of teenagers who have played GTA and as it's clearly a satirical, OTT, hugely unrealistic video game, they don't try to mimic what they see in it. But plenty of young people are influenced by the hypersexualisation and subtler misogyny in reality TV shows, and try to mimic that.

If someone is buying it for their underage child they are also going to do any age checks for them. Mind your own business and worry about your own child.

Snowflake.

GTA, unfairly imo, gets a lot of stick but it isn’t the only game that’s violent, nor is it the only one that pushes the boundaries with satire. A very large number of popular video games have similar themes or mechanics.

What people who aren’t familiar with games don’t understand is that some games are open world, that means you have the main story quests and side quests but the world is also a sandbox where you’re free to roam in between quests, developers try to make these worlds feel realistic and react to the things you do, if you run an npc over whilst driving, they’ll be injured or die, but you could also end up being arrested or shot by in-game police.

All of the things mentioned on this thread about both GTA and RDR2 are completely optional mechanics that aren’t related to any quests or storylines. There’s no quest in rdr2 where you have to kill a suffragette but there is a quest where you have to help them to progress the main story. The main character steps in multiple times throughout the game to help female npcs, one of those incidents occurs in the very first chapter of the game. You can kill a suffragette in rdr free roam, but you can also kill pretty much any other npc if you want to. Shop keepers, homeless people, bandits, rich town folk, poor town folk. Everyone and I mean everyone is fair game no matter their sex, skin colour or any other characteristic. During a normal play through of both RDR2 and GTA, you kill far more male npc’s by an overwhelming margin.

Of course children shouldn’t play it, especially not primary aged children. But that goes for a lot of games and it’s on us as parents to monitor what our children have access to and decide what they’re ready for and when. GTA isn’t any worse than Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3 or Fallout4 just to name a few examples.

I agree. Kids are far more likely to cause trouble sitting on a games console than roaming the streets.

Isn't like 80% of violence perpetrated against men?

Someone else will be able to explain this better than me but the root cause and type of violence carried out against the two sexes is typically very different.

Violence against men is most likely to be carried out by another man, and a large percentage is because of gang violence, street fights, or violence related to other dubious activities.

Violence against women is also most likely to be carried out by a man but it’s frequently due to domestic violence - its violence typically carried out in private and where a woman should feel safe. It’s also massively underreported. Aside from that, women are disproportionately likely to be the victims of sexual assault, rape, etc.

Aside from the root cause being different, women are less able to fight back. Pound for pound, men are typically 20-40% stronger. When you add in the fact that men are often bigger too, the strength disparity is very significant. There are other biological differences too such as larger hands, longer arms, greater aerobic capacity etc, that give men an even greater advantage in a physical attack.

I’m not correlating any of this to the OP’s question about gaming, just answering your point about male-on-male violence.

Actually, since I’m here, I may as well answer OP too!

We are a gaming household although each of us has a different preference for genre/style etc. The DC still play Roblox (age 16) as well as console games. DP enjoys GTA and RDR type games.

When I was an underage teen I puffed on cigarettes, knocked back Thunderbirds, and watched 18-rated videos. Like PP, I don’t think it did me much harm - but that’s not really the point.

18 ratings are there for a reason - not all teens are mature enough to deal with this type of content. Young minds are easily influenced and they’re at a vulnerable point in their life, having interests that outstrip their ability to comprehend, process, and handle it maturely.

I can’t see how a digital guardrail is a bad idea. 13 and 14 yr olds don’t need access to adult content. If adults want to bypass the security for their child, that’s up to them. But I agree that having it as a starting point makes good sense.

I’m struggling to understand the hostile replies on this thread. Unless PP are genuinely suggesting that there shouldn’t be any age restriction on sexually explicit or violent content - which would be a mindblowing stance to take, given what we know from studies and research.

I think it’s quite strange there’s not more protection, especially given the recent clampdown on social media for under 16s.

Were a gaming family and both dh and I are looking forward to this game coming out, we played through the last one together and theres no contest in how much development goes into their games, the depth and qaulity of their games is unmatched I think.

If parents setup their child.profiles properly on switch, ps5 or xbox, the game wont launch on their profile.

If kids are playing this, its a parenring issue.

We are very strict and have all tech including netflix at age appropriatet levels, meanwhile classmates at school as young as 10 years old watch 15 or 18 tv shows, movies and games as normal on their adult netflix profiles...watching older media has always been an issue even when i was at primary school with classmates talking about the blair witch project and the ring movies, my parents were crap and for family movie night put on 18 rated horrors that they wanted to watch while I was in late primary and early secondary - it gave me nightmares!

You seem to think gta is the epitomy of all evil, its not and is a feat of game design. If your kids profiles and your kids friends profiles are setup properly youve nothing to worry about. As with all media, its down to parenting.

To be honest I think call of duty games are worse as theres graphic blood constantly but it doesnt get as bad a rep as GTA, at least GTA has a great story and leisure activities taking part in the immersive world. And again lots of primary kids and early secondary are let loose on call of duty and seems acceptable and it really is constant killing with blood - I'd say thats worse for kids to be honest just killing one after another. But either way if kids have a child profile they should never be playing 18's. Like everything in life its easy to pass judgement when youve no experience of it, try and not be so judgemental maybe.

Ffs going after rdr2 aswell. Thats another amazing quality game that is held in the highest regard amongst gamers.

Do you just want every controversial thing banned in all media.

Im a mum and Ive played rdr2 and loved and found it very relaxing, immersive games are my stress relief and escapism.

Ive not even completed rdr2 t as its so vast. But spent a lot of time upgrading my horse, searching for treasure and completing quests and doing things like hunting in the wild west.

You'll find that rockstar games can be played at a very slow pace with no forcing to do missions and simply exploring for hours.

Theres controversial things or references to history in all media. Books, tv, movies and games.

Do you want us all to live in a PG world?

It sounds like your just out to find fault. Its easy to pick apart any form of media and of course in anything rated 18 there will be topics not suitable for children, hence the child.profiles.

It sounds like you just dislike gaming to be honest. Maybe if you tried it you might like it, do you play games with your kids?

But there is protection, a child should have a child profile?

What do we want, a nanny state?

Kids need a profile to access gaming, parents need to setup their kids profile, if they want override it, thats on them and their crap parenting choices.

If a child watches an 18 tv show, movie or plays a game at home - thats all on their parent.

I would love it if classmates stopped discussing 18's as I find it annoying to have that exposure when we go to so much effort at home to keep things age appropriate. But if those parents dont give a crap, what is the answer, I dont think a nanny state is the way to go.

Its crap parenting choices if theres consumption of 18 rated media at home. But i also think ipads should be banned for under 5's as a minimum but again thatd be nanny state stuff. I th8nk there should be guidance for parenta but it cant be said theres not restrictions because there is - child profiles!

@SpidersAreShitheads

I’m struggling to understand the hostile replies on this thread.

I think we have seen a huge infringement upon our personal lives in recent months by the current government’s actions which seem to be promoting censorship. I’m happy there’s a pushback against this.

I think a lot of the rhetoric about the manosphere and incel culture is being stoked by those who wish to introduce more censorship and increase surveillance. It really does feel that there is a push for what people feel is an infringement upon our rights and privacy.

I don’t think video games or televisions in bedrooms are promoting violence in 2026. And I’m not convinced this is particularly misogynistic.