Some stories absolutely deserve to be talked about, and this is one of them: GTA 6 was almost denied an official classification in South Korea – which would have stopped it from being sold – because of how much male nudity there was.

The full details can be found on Invenglobal.com, which managed to obtain the minutes from three different review sessions of the South Korean ratings board in which the committee debated refusing to give GTA 6 a rating. Hilariously, at one point the committee had to request a map from Rockstar detailing exactly where to find the nudity. I urge you to read that sentence again, because that might be one of the funniest things I’ve ever had to write down.

The application was submitted on September 1, and the initial review on September 10 ended in a 3-3 tie on whether to give it an “Adults Only” rating or refuse it outright. The committee decided to postpone the decision following a recommendation for modification. A playable build of the game was finally delivered at the end of September due to security concerns, which is understandable. It wasn’t until the third meeting on October 16 that the committee finally settled on an “Adults Only” rating.

So what was the issue? Apparently, it was dicks. In itself, this is not a problem because the ratings board allows for nudity, and they commented that the nudity itself was not offensive. They were just surprised at the amount of male genitalia that was in the game when nothing sexual was even happening.

“It is not that genital exposure is completely forbidden, but it has never appeared this frequently without context,” said member A.

Effectively, this created a schism: one half of the group felt Rockstar was maybe pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable because of the sheer amount of male nudity, while the other half felt that non-sexual nudity was not automatically obscene, especially in an adult game.

Interestingly, during sex scenes, Rockstar seems to be more careful.

“It appears that they intentionally covered genital exposure in explicitly sexual scenes, while allowing exposure in background settings,” said Member C during the final meeting on October 16.

Member F during the October 16 meeting also proposed a rule change: “How about establishing internal rules to treat non-sexual, simple genital exposure as an Adults Only rating, similar to film ratings?”

In the end, there were several factors leading to the “Adults Only” rating. By October 16, it was looking like South Korea would be the only country to deny the game a rating, and some of the committee argued that they could not justify essentially banning the game from sale simply because they considered the content offensive or excessive. They needed to identify a specific legal provision supporting refusal, and the internal guidelines concerning nudity weren’t legally binding.

Perhaps the strangest revelation from the whole affair is that GTA 6 apparently contains so many exposed penises that South Korea’s ratings board had to convene three separate meetings to determine whether they were legally acceptable. Female genital nudity, meanwhile, barely warranted a mention. Whether that’s because it just doesn’t exist to the same extent or they have differing standards, I cannot tell. But I guarantee I will do a very thorough investigation of the lack of female nudity when the game launches. That’s a joke. Calm down.