YouTube is cracking down on two different forms of content, very different, in fact. One is online gambling, where YouTube does not want content that shows, promotes and facilitates social casino sites shown to anyone under age. But the next part? Well, this should be something.
YouTube also wants to censor “graphic violence in video games,” which is a pretty broad category. The specific rules, however, seem like they could have a direct impact on Grand Theft Auto 6 specifically:
“We will age-restrict an additional small subset of video game content featuring realistic human characters that focuses on scenes of torture or scenes of mass violence against non-combatants. We’ll consider several factors when reviewing this type of content, such as:
Duration – If the graphic scene is sustained (rather than fleeting). For compilation videos, we’ll now consider the cumulative duration of all of the graphic clips combined.
Prominence – If the violent imagery is zoomed-in or the main focus of the scene
Realistic human characters – If the violence is happening to a character that looks like a real human.”
There are rules against some measure of graphic gaming content now, but this expands those categories, including “violence happening to a character that looks like a real human.” What does that mean? Like they’re human-shaped? They’re photorealistic? That’s pretty vague.
But where GTA 6 comes in is the bit about “scenes of mass violence against non-combatants.” There are plenty of violent video games out there, but only some allow you to kill “innocent bystanders” instead of enemies trying to kill you. And even fewer allow you to do so on a mass scale.
However, this has always been a big part of GTA since GTA 3, and over the years, these scenes have gotten more and more realistic to the point where you will be able to execute mass shootings against “innocents” in the most convincing way possible, given how much the tech has evolved. Going on “sprees” is generally not a part of actual game missions, but it’s absolutely a part of the open world as you murder everyone you see. Pedestrians, the EMS workers that come to help the pedestrians, the cars stopped in traffic by the EMS workers coming to help the pedestrians. And of course, every police officer that arrives, though at least they’re actually shooting back.
This content is not outright banned, but it will be age-restricted, meaning it will heavily limit the video’s reach and potential earnings. But a mix of these rules will make it a bit nebulous as to what’s okay and what isn’t (again, “violence happening to a character who looks human”), so we will have to see how this works in practice, especially when GTA 6 hits.
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