It’s a bad time to be based in Australia if you want to play GTA Online, as the country’s stricter laws have now made it so that the Diamond Resort Casino can’t be used in Grand Theft Auto.
The era of age verification is becoming tighter, but other countries’ laws are starting to have a profound effect on gaming. While other parts of the world are clamping down on microtransactions, Australia has brought the hammer down on free gambling in GTA Online.
Diamond Resort Casino Not Available to GTA Online Users
Verified by J00B on the GTA Forums, via a Reddit post, they explain what has happened:
‘Sorry if this is not the place for this post. I just saw a post on Reddit about how the Gambling feature has been removed for Australian users. I thought, surely not! But it is 100% correct. You can’t interact with the Lucky Wheel nor can you play any casino game, including the private table in your Penthouse. You can still buy/sell casino chips, and also collect your 1000 free daily chips, but aside from that its over. Guess my hunt for the Lost Slamvan is over.’
This has been followed up by iconic GTA leaker and dataminer Tex2, who has seen the evidence firsthand in the game’s coding.
‘Rockstar Games now restricts Australian players from gambling in the Casino in #GTAOnline,’ posted the online personality, and their X post showed the territory code being ‘AU,’ and multiple restrictions, from Poker to Blackjack to Roulette to the beloved Lucky Wheel.
The big concern is that when the next iteration of GTA Online begins for GTA 6, and presumably has its own casino(s), will the Australian laws apply to this? Meaning, Australian players will have a scaled-back GTA 6 Online experience.
Moreover, could some of these regulations be implemented by other countries moving forward?
Have you been affected by the new GTA Online ban? Let us know through the official Insider Gaming Discord Server.
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Andy is Insider Gaming’s Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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