South Korea's Game Content Rating Board (GCRB) ended up giving GTA 6 an Adults Only rating, but the first vote was a 3-3 tie between that and refusing classification altogether. That is according to committee minutes obtained by Inven Global. Neither Rockstar nor Take-Two has commented.
Violence was never the sticking point
The problem was frequent male genital nudity in mission backgrounds, with no sexual context. "It is not that genital exposure is completely forbidden, but it has never appeared this frequently without context," committee member A said at the first review. At the second, member D put it more bluntly: "What trips us up is that there is far too much genital exposure," adding that "the publisher keeps pushing the line."
The board's researcher played the build for days and had to ask the publisher for maps several times just to locate the scenes. The conclusion: they were mostly one-off backgrounds with no sexual interaction, and scenes discussed after the leaks were not found in the build. The publisher told the board the main story alone takes "dozens of hours."
Insider Gaming picked up the story, and the outlet's Tom Henderson shared it on X with the "far too much genital exposure" line in the headline.
Three meetings and an 8-1 vote
- September 1: rating application submitted.
- September 10: 3-3 split; decision postponed and a modification recommendation issued.
- September 28: playable build delivered after security-related delays.
- October 2: postponed again for "sufficient gameplay examination."
- October 8: meeting cancelled for lack of quorum.
- October 16: all nine members vote 8-1 for Adults Only, with descriptors for sensuality, violence, crime, drugs and language.
Other markets weighed on the outcome. By October 16, ten overseas bodies, including the ESRB and PEGI, had already given the game adult ratings, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE going 21+. Member D had warned early on that "there will also be a burden if South Korea alone holds back the rating." The publisher asked for the result to stay private until the November 19 release.
Whether anything in the game was changed after the board's recommendation is not stated in the minutes.
Source: Inven Global, Insider Gaming, Tom Henderson on X
