UK Twitch users losing access to GTA and other mature categories​

Update 04/11/25 – 09:07 pm (IST): One of our readers (h/t @KeplerXG) claims that they managed to work around the restriction by using the “Just Chatting” category. Using this allowed them to retain their audience in the UK.

So, as a creator, if you don’t want to leave your UK audience in the dark, this could be a quick hack for the timebeing, until Twitch rolls out proper age verification options.

Original article published on November 04, 2025, follows:

UK Twitch users are finding huge sections of the platform suddenly inaccessible. Grand Theft Auto streams, Battlefield channels, Silent Hill playthroughs—all gone. No advance notice, no explanation waiting in their inbox, just a blank page when checking out categories or vague errors.

The problem started Monday night when viewers began reporting they couldn’t watch anything tagged as mature content. This wasn’t limited to obviously risqué stuff either. Games like GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2, Resident Evil, Phasmophobia, and even Control were completely blocked. Followed channels disappeared from sidebars. Searches returned nothing. VODs and clips became unavailable if they touched any of these categories during the stream.

One affiliate streamer went through the whole song and dance — contacted support, submitted ID, got confirmation that everything checked out. Still locked out. Another user, @xoyakixo, is 35 years old and has been moderating channels for nearly a decade as part of the Twitch Moderators Club. Didn’t matter. The system seems to have no mechanism to actually verify any of this.

Meanwhile, popular streamer Zach Bussey also highlighted multiple reports regarding the problem in a post on X:

Support tickets didn’t help much either. Some representatives apparently suggested they could “change your date of birth” as a workaround, apparently forgetting that Twitch’s own policies prevent birthdate modifications after account creation. Others just acknowledged the problem exists and said they’d escalate it. Nobody had real answers because the infrastructure to handle age verification simply doesn’t exist yet (at least publicly).

Meanwhile, the “Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches” category remains fully accessible, according to some. Make that make sense.

This whole situation puts UK streamers in an awkward spot too. Anyone who marks their content as mature just lost a chunk of their regular viewers. Subscriptions, bits, ad revenue — all potentially affected because Twitch couldn’t be bothered to have their verification system ready before pulling the trigger on restrictions.

The law itself isn’t really the issue here. Most people understand wanting to keep kids away from inappropriate content. But rolling out restrictions without the corresponding verification system is just lazy implementation that punishes legitimate adult users while probably doing nothing to actually protect minors.

That said, one user did share a potential workaround that apparently helped them get around the ban. They pointed out that the Firefox extension “Alternative Player for Twitch” seems to bypass the restrictions on desktop. Sadly, the extension is no longer available via the Chrome Web Store.

Apart from that, the obvious VPN trick should also do the needful for those who want to stream mature content. Just make sure to use a trusted VPN provider to avoid any privacy issues.

Twitch is yet to make a public statement regarding the enforcement, but we’ll keep an eye out for any further developments and will post an update.