VRChat is now offering age verification to its adult users with paid subscriptions.
Last November, VRChat explained the plan to partner with an organization called Persona to externally verify age with a government ID as well as a phone or computer with a camera. The feature is used to “gate access to instances that were created with the ‘Age Verification’ option enabled” and won’t be required to use VRChat overall.
Now the age verification feature is live to VRC+ subscribers with a Q&A explaining its implementation:
“The age verification process utilizes Persona to verify your government-issued ID and compare it to your likeness. VRChat will receive and process text extracted from your ID, and will not receive any images or face scans. This information is used to generate an irreversible hash, which is saved.
All extracted text from your verification process other than your birth date is deleted, and is never stored on our servers.
Here’s the original announcement video for the feature:
“We’re going to be partnering with a few event organizers to run a trial for age verified events,” VRChat Senior Community Manager Strasz explained in the announcement video last year. “During this trial period only members of those select groups will be able to apply for age verification and only those groups in particular will be able to restrict instance access to those who have been age verified. We’re keeping it small to start so that we can work out the kinks.”
Group Instance creators who have access to the feature “have the option to restrict access to age-verified users. For example, a bar may want to restrict access to 18+ users. This will require all attendees to go through the Age Verification process. Once the process is complete, that user (assuming they are 18 or older) can enter any Age Verification Instances in the future.”
An optional badge indicating “Verified 18+” can also be added to the VRChat profile of age-verified users.
“We believe that adding age verification as an option will enable our communities and users to better tailor their experience and build a stronger and safer platform,” VRChat explained.
This article originally published November 29, 2024 with announcement and testing of VRChat age verification. Article was updated and republished with the release of age verification to VRChat+ subscribers two months later.
