The Grand Theft Auto 6 hype cycle has now reached the point where a games reporter had to write a follow-up story clarifying that she did not see the protagonist’s penis.
That really is where things stand. Oddly enough, the joke leads to a serious question.
The road to the shower scene
Rockstar’s rollout has gone through several distinct phases. The trailers and delays came first. A long run of leaks followed. Now the official blowout is underway. It began with a half-hour gameplay demo on Netflix, continued with major previews in the games press, and has now landed in what could be called its arty fashion magazine phase.
GTA 6 got a cover story in Love magazine. Some of it was familiar Rockstar talk, such as the claim that every NPC is a distinct individual, which fans have heard before. Other parts went deeper and looked at how the new game updates the series’ long-running satire of the American dream.
The specialist press wasn’t going to be left behind. This week, a major games outlet did something unusual: it published the complete, unedited transcript of the gameplay demo with Rockstar’s Rob Nelson that shaped its coverage in August. The transcript runs to 10,000 words.
That may seem like overkill. Still, it’s fair game for a release this big, and it gives fans enough to tide them over a little longer. It includes new details on the Wanted system, missions, NPCs and more.
Official updates keep coming too. Rockstar has now put out a press release about the game’s radio stations. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds to anyone who has spent an hour simply driving around Los Santos with the radio on.
Enter Cyberleek
The reporter behind the demo write-up ended up publishing a follow-up denying that she had seen Jason’s penis during a shower scene. What happened next is easy to guess.
Cyberleek, a leaker who had been quiet for some time, came back with a batch of footage showing a naked Jason. This is leaked, unverified material, not something Rockstar has released. Even so, it appears to confirm that Jason’s anatomy is rendered in GTA 6.
It’s ridiculous. But it arrives just after last week’s news that the game will include sex scenes, and that raises a question that deserves a serious answer.
A double standard, or not?
Last summer, Steam and itch.io delisted large numbers of indie games with adult themes. Some of those games were pornographic, some were serious, and some were both. The stores made the call themselves after pressure from payment processors, who were in turn being pushed by conservative activist groups.
So how can the world’s biggest developer put sex in its game while smaller creators are removed from storefronts? On the surface, it looks like a double standard.
It may not be one. UK games commentator George Osborn posted a thread on the subject that’s worth reading in full. In short, online stores like Steam and itch aren’t covered by age rating regulation in the way games with physical releases are. GTA 6 counts as a physical release, even if the box only contains a code.
You might expect that to give digital stores more freedom. In practice, it does the opposite.
How red tape works in your favor
Without age ratings, platforms have no legal definitions or protections for the games they sell. Often they don’t even know what’s in those games. That leaves them open to the kind of outside pressure that hit indie developers last year.
An age-rated game has had its content checked against what’s legally allowed in that country. If the content is legal, nobody can block the game from being sold.
So, of all things, the fix is more regulation. That means platforms and indie developers taking on paperwork and bureaucracy. It’s a dull ending for a story that began with a shower scene, but it’s the right one.
In the UK, and probably still in the US, you have a legal right to look at a digital penis if you choose to. Ratings boards are what protect that right. Rockstar has their stamp of approval. Many indie games don’t.