Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is easily one of the best-looking games of the year, and it looks like it’s convincing enough to fool Reddit and Discord’s age-checking programs. Over in the UK, new online safety rules went live and now require several platforms to verify the age of its various users there. Brits have been getting around that system using a variety of tricks, and as one Dany Sterkhov noted, pretending to be Sam Porter Bridges is a reliable way to trick the system.
Like other PlayStation first-party games, Death Stranding 2 has a robust photo mode that allows you to easily and quickly strike a pose with the game’s protagonist, who is played by actor Norman Reedus. Game director Hideo Kojima used a sophisticated photography rig made up of dozens of cameras to capture every minute detail of the real-life people who provided their likeness for the game’s characters, and with photo mode open in Death Stranding 2, simply pointing your smartphone at your display is enough to bypass the security systems.
What makes this even more impressive is that even if you’re asked to make certain facial expressions, you can do that in Death Stranding 2’s photo mode easily. As noted by The Verge, Discord and Reddit use their own separate age verification systems, and fooling both of them was remarkably easy. Meanwhile, the UK Government is facing quite a bit of criticism over the introduction of these measures, and it refuses to repeal the Online Safety Act even in the face of petitions that have almost 400,00 people calling for it to be rolled back (via PC Gamer).
In other Death Stranding 2 news, more interesting details were revealed about the game and player behavior. Kojima tweeted that almost 80% of the players who finished it kept playing–got to get those five-star SSS connections!–and that people really loved to rescue kangaroos in the post-apocalyptic outback.