GTA 6 Online Will Be Unplayable for Millions of Gamers

Grand Theft Auto 6 will be impacted by Australia’s new age verification law, which will mean millions of gamers will not be able to access the new game’s online multiplayer mode. Grand Theft Auto 6 is potentially the most highly-anticipated new game release of all time, and it’s set to make a massive impact when it launches later this year.

Even though it was first officially announced years ago, Rockstar Games has been largely quiet about Grand Theft Auto 6 and everything it’s bringing to the table. To date, only two Grand Theft Auto 6 trailers have been released by Rockstar, and both have focused exclusively on the game’s single-player experience. The GTA 6 single-player campaign will feature dual protagonists in the form of Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval as they find themselves navigating the criminal underworld of Vice City and the state of Leonida (the GTA universe’s Florida equivalent) at large.

Grand Theft Auto 6 Should Bite the Bullet on a Feature GTA 5 Skipped

Grand Theft Auto 5 never got an increasingly popular console feature, but Rockstar ought to take another crack at it with Grand Theft Auto 6.

GTA 6 Will Be Impacted by Australia’s New Age Verification Rules

Considering the dizzying success of GTA Online, it is a guarantee that Grand Theft Auto 6 will have online multiplayer, even though the mode has yet to be revealed. It’s possible that the GTA 6 online multiplayer will be added at some point after the single-player launches, like what we saw with GTA 5, but that has yet to be clarified. Whenever GTA 6 online is out, we do know that people in Australia will have a much harder time accessing it than those elsewhere in the world. Australia’s new age verification rules already impact the current GTA Online, and so they will undoubtedly be a factor for GTA 6‘s online as well. The age verification requirement means that anyone that’s not at least 18 years old will not be able to play the game online. Likewise, those that are 18+ but unable or unwilling to verify their age in the region will also be locked out of playing Grand Theft Auto 6‘s online multiplayer mode.

GTA 6’s single-player mode is not expected to be impacted by age verification requirements.

PC Gamers Worldwide Will Also Be Missing Out At First

Age verification requirements for various things are slowly becoming a reality all over the world, and so it’s entirely possible that gamers outside of Australia will also struggle to play GTA 6 online. But there are reasons beyond age verification that millions of gamers will be unable to play GTA 6‘s online multiplayer mode. When Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19, it will do so only on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. This is extremely disappointing for PC gamers, but many assumed this would be the case anyway, considering Rockstar’s track record of releasing games on PC.

Grand Theft Auto 6‘s PC port has yet to be officially announced, and so it’s hard to say when exactly it will come to the platform. Grand Theft Auto 5 didn’t come to PC until two years after it was first released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and it took over a year for Red Dead Redemption 2 to make the jump. It’s entirely possible that PC gamers will be able to play GTA 6 in 2027, but it’s also totally within the realm of possibility that the PC port won’t come until 2028 or later.

Whenever GTA 6 does come to PC, it will mean its online multiplayer is suddenly accessible to millions more gamers. However, unless some laws change, the age verification requirements will still be in effect, therefore making GTA 6‘s online multiplayer completely inaccessible to millions, or otherwise more difficult to access. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact these new laws have not just on GTA 6, but other M-rated online video game releases in the years to come.