GTA 6 nearly got refused classification in South Korea over nudity, and the vote was dead split

So this one's been floating around and it's kind of wild. According to reporting from Inven that Push Square picked up, GTA 6 came really close to getting refused classification in South Korea a couple months back. The ratings board there, the GCRB, apparently couldn't come to an agreement on the first vote at all.

Three members wanted to slap it with an Adults Only rating. Three others voted to just refuse it outright. Dead split. That's about as close to a ban as you can get without actually getting one.

what was the sticking point

Nudity, basically. The quote that's going around from the board is something along the lines of genital exposure never having appeared this frequently before. Which, if you've been following Rockstar's output for the last twenty years, is saying something.

Obviously it did end up getting classified over there, otherwise we'd have heard a lot more noise by now. But the fact that it was a coin flip at the committee stage is interesting. Korea's ratings board has historically been pretty strict about sexual content in games, way more than they are about violence.

does this mean anything for us

Honestly? Probably not much. Different regions have different standards and Rockstar clearly worked it out. But it does make you wonder how much got trimmed or adjusted for certain territories, and we already saw the Japan rating situation where sex and drugs got pulled. There's a pattern forming here.

I'm not trying to start a censorship panic thread, I promise. It's just genuinely curious that the same game can be a total non-issue in one country and a borderline refusal in another. Ratings boards are weird.

Anyway, game's out in a week. Curious what the version people actually get in Korea looks like compared to everywhere else.

Does stuff like this change how you feel about region-specific edits, or do you just shrug and play your own copy?

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Source: Push Square · Curated content.