Child protection laws also threaten gaming: GTA 6 Online may be inaccessible to some

A world trend as an announcement of the future

The first concrete example of this new reality arrived from Australia, which served as a global testing ground. At the beginning of August 2026, players of the popular GTA Online (as part of GTA V) were greeted with a lock screen that required proof of legal age when starting the game. Due to the new law requiring age verification for all online games with an adult (R18+) rating, Rockstar Games had to implement a system that requires players to scan an ID or biometric facial analysis.

What is happening in Australia is not an isolated case. In Great Britain, the Online Safety Act is in force, originally designed to combat pornography, but its broad scope now includes video games. Reliable insiders claim that Rockstar alreadyć plans to introduce age verification “region by region”. Players who do not pass verification could be blocked from accessing GTA Online or disabled from key features like chat, which is a tectonic disruption for a community where, according to research, a large number of players started playing the series before their 18th birthday.

The Act on Digital Protection of Children in Parliament: What does it mean for games?

This global trend is not a distant threat, butć a topic that is actively discussed in Croatia as well. Political party Možemo! proposed the “Act on Digital Protection of Children”, which passed the first reading in the Parliament in March 2026. The draft law directly targets the protection of young people’s mental health and provides for a ban on the use of social networks by 15-year-olds without express parental consent, as well as limiting “aggressive algorithms” and addictive design elements such as endless scrolling. On the other hand, anyone who has played GTA in general, but also GTA Online, knows what kind of game and what kind of community it is. While there are certainly positive cases of making friends and cooperation, servers can become a very toxic place that can really harm developing children, even though to Rockstar’s effort to filter sensitive content. For example, recently it became a hit on social networks that someone in GTA Online created a mission that is actually a copy of the events of the murder of Charlie Kirk, which Rockstar had to move.

Although the rulers express skepticism towards a complete ban, claiming that existing European regulations such as the Digital Services Act are more offers solutions, the very fact that the proposal entered the parliamentary procedure and caused a heated debate shows that the tightening of the rules is inevitable. With the growing debate about banning the use of cell phones in schools, which is more resulted in concrete regulations, a political climate is being created in which the protection of children on the Internet has become a priority.

If this or a similar law comes to life in Croatia, it is almost certain that its rules will spill over into the video game industry. Games with online interaction and adult content, such as the upcoming GTA 6, will inevitably fall under the same age verification requirements that are planned for social networks. This would mean that Croatian players, following the example of those in Australia, would have to prove their legal age in order to access the online component of the game.

Privacy as the greatest sacrifice

While regulators claim to protect children, concerns are growing among gamers about privacy violations. Verification methods, which include sending photos of IDs or scanning faces, open a Pandora’s box of questions about data security. Who will process this sensitive information – Rockstar or some third party company? How long will the data be kept and how will it be protected from hacker attacks and misuse? Experiences with checks on social networks have shown that systems can be bypassed, but also that user data has become a new target for cybercriminals. For millions of fans, the arrival of GTA 6, scheduled for November 2026, thus becomes a bittersweet anticipation, marked by uncertainty as to whether they will even be allowed to enter the new virtual world for which they have been waiting for so long.