South Korea's Ratings Board Split 3-3 on Refusing GTA 6 Before Approving It 8-1

South Korea's Game Content Rating Board came close to refusing GTA 6 a rating, which would have kept it off sale in the country. The Korean outlet Inven obtained the documents from the board's review meetings and published what the members said and how they voted.

The board settled on an Adults Only rating on October 16 by eight votes to one, with the dissenting member still holding out for refusal. It took three sessions to get there. At the first, on September 10, the panel was split 3-3 between Adults Only and refusing a rating outright. A second review on October 2 was postponed for further examination.

What the board argued about

The sticking point was not the violence, the crime or the drugs that usually define a GTA rating. It was nudity shown outside any sexual context: male genitals appearing in the background of the world, which researchers told the board mostly did not lead to any sexual interaction. One member is quoted in the documents saying that it is not that genital exposure is completely forbidden, but that it has never appeared this frequently without context.

Whether a refusal would have held up

Members also questioned the ground they would be standing on. The handbook used to judge a refusal on sensuality was put together internally from the board's own educational material and carries no legal force, Inven reports, and the panel debated whether Articles 22 and 32 of the Game Industry Promotion Act gave them enough to block the game. By the time of the final vote, ten overseas boards had already rated GTA 6, among them the ESRB, PEGI and Australia's, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates setting it at 21 and over, which left South Korea looking at being the only country to say no.

The rating as issued is Adults Only, with content descriptors for sensuality, violence, crime, drugs and language. That decision was reported on October 16; what Inven has added is how narrow it was. GTA 6 goes on sale in South Korea on November 19, the same day as everywhere else.