Rockstar confirms GTA 6's M rating, with an In-Game Purchases notice

Rockstar has put Grand Theft Auto VI's age rating on its official site. Since 1 October the footer of rockstargames.com/VI carries the ESRB's Mature 17+ badge with seven content descriptors: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, and Use of Drugs and Alcohol. Under them sits one more line: "In-Game Purchases."

The store pages tell the same story in other countries. On the UK PlayStation Store the game is PEGI 18, again with an In-Game Purchases notice. In Australia it is rated R18+ for drug use, high impact violence and sex scenes. New Zealand gives it R18, and the US PlayStation and Xbox stores show Mature 17+, according to GTA BOOM. The ESRB list repeats the seven descriptors GTA 5 received, so on paper the series is not moving into new territory.

The purchases line drew the most attention, because Strauss Zelnick (chief executive of Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company) said on 17 September that GTA 6 launches with no recurrent consumer spending. The label does not contradict him by itself. The ESRB applies it to any offer to pay real money inside a game, and its definition lists subscriptions, season passes and upgrades next to virtual currency. The store page already sells one such thing: every pre-order includes a month of GTA+, the GTA Online membership, which then renews at the regular monthly price until cancelled. Rockstar has not said which purchase the label refers to.

The rating does rule one thing out. For loot boxes and other paid items with random contents the ESRB has a separate label, "In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)", and GTA 6 does not carry it. For buyers the picture is simple: an adults-only game in every region we checked, and a notice that something can be bought inside, without saying what.