(Image courtesy Wolf Territories Grid.)
Wolf Territories Grid, a UK-based grid that is one of the largest in OpenSim, now requires residents to pass a photo ID and live selfie check before they can enter regions with sexual content — and has closed those regions to hypergrid visitors altogether, the grid said in an online safety statement at the end of October.
“Visitors from other grids can’t enter Adult Content regions,” the statement said. “We have no way to check their age. They are welcome everywhere else.”
The grid said it made the change to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act. The act was passed in 2023 and is being rolled out in stages. The parts that matter most to OpenSim grids took effect last year — the duty to deal with illegal content on March 17, 2025, and the duty to keep children away from pornography and other harmful content on July 25, 2025.
Under the law, asking users how old they are doesn’t count as keeping children out.
“A date of birth typed into a form is not enough under the law,” Wolf Territories said.
That is why the grid went with a photo ID and a selfie.
I asked Wolf Territories Grid owner Paul Clevett, who is known in-world as Lone Wolf, whether Ofcom — the UK regulator that enforces the law — had told the grid to make the change.
“It is a legal requirement for all UK grids open to the public to comply with the Online Safety Act,” Clevett told Hypergrid Business. “Ofcom will not contact you until someone reports a violation and at that point you may be fined.”
Those fines can go as high as 18 million British pounds — about US $23 million — or ten percent of a company’s worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. The biggest fine so far was 1.35 million pounds, which Ofcom issued in February to a pornography company that didn’t have age checks.
I’ve also asked Clevett what happens to existing regions with adult content if their owners don’t pay the new fee, and how the grid will enforce the rules in private homes and messages. I haven’t heard back yet, but I’ll update this story when I do.
How the age check works
The check is free, only has to be done once, and is handled by the payment company Stripe, according to Wolf Territories. Residents start it from the grid’s website, under “Verify my age” in the control panel.
“We never see or keep your ID,” the statement said. “Stripe does the check and only tells us whether you passed.”
There are no exceptions.
“Nobody gets in without the check,” the statement said. “That includes region owners and our own staff.”
Clevett declined to say how many residents have completed the check so far, citing data protection.
Most residents will never see it, the grid said.
“For most people, nothing changes,” the statement said. “If you don’t go to Adult Content regions, you will never be asked to show ID.”
Adult regions are not Adult Content regions
I was a little confused about this at first and had to read this section twice, but there are two different kinds of adult regions. Wolf Territories now has four region ratings, and two of them have the word “adult” in the name.
General and Moderate regions are open to everyone 15 and older, which is the grid’s minimum age. Moderate regions allow mature themes, swearing, and non-sexual partial nudity such as swimwear.
Adult regions are for residents 18 and older. They allow strong violence, strong language, and adult themes — but no sexual content. There is no ID check for these regions. The grid goes by the date of birth on the account.
Adult Content regions are a separate, fourth category, and the only one behind the Stripe check.
“Sexual content is allowed only in Adult Content regions,” the statement said. “It is not allowed in Adult regions, private regions, homes, profiles, groups or messages.”
So it looks like a region that is rated Adult on Wolf Territories is still open to hypergrid visitors. A region that is rated Adult Content is not.
The grid said it didn’t want to put the whole grid behind an ID check.
“So we had two choices: ban adult sexual content everywhere, or keep it in one clearly marked place behind a real age check,” the statement said.
The same split applies to inventory. Adult clothing, animations, and furniture can be bought by anyone, but can only be worn or used by age-checked adults inside Adult Content regions, the statement said.
Region owners who want to host Adult Content regions have to pass the same check and pay ten British pounds a month or 120 pounds a year — about $13 or $152. The statement describes it as a separate fee that covers all of an owner’s regions and pays for the extra moderation and checks.
Regular land rental on the grid starts at seven pounds, or about $9, a month for a standard region.
The new rules took effect on October 26, according to the grid’s online safety page.
What other grids are doing
Wolf Territories is the second big grid I know of to put up a hypergrid wall because of the UK law.
In August 2025, soon after the child safety rules took effect, ZetaWorlds said it would require all of its UK users to prove they are over 18, either with a credit card on file or a full age verification.
“Hypergrid access for users from the UK will be entirely blocked as we have no sufficient way to verify those users,” Zetamex Network CEO Vincent Sylvester wrote in a post on the ZetaWorlds blog.
Sylvester also said that storing age verification data is a privacy nightmare, and urged UK residents to complain to their members of Parliament.
The two grids took different routes. ZetaWorlds checks its UK users, for the whole grid. Wolf Territories checks everyone, wherever they live, but only for one type of region.
Other grid owners want no part of it.
“I do not like the idea of having to collect people’s identification or force people to disclose this stuff,” Josh Boam told Hypergrid Business.
Boam is the CEO of the AviWorlds grid, and also runs Hosting4OpenSim, a company that hosts OpenSim grids for other people.
“The age verification would be something individual grids can opt for but I would not be pushing,” Boam said.
Instead, everyone who registers on one of the company’s grids has to check a box saying they are over 18, Boam said. If a user turns out to be younger, the company can ask for proof and lock the account.
And Boam has no plans to close anything to hypergrid visitors.
“As for hypergrid, we won’t be restricting,” Boam said. “I hate restrictions and so many others do too.”
Kitely isn’t planning ID checks either.
“We aren’t a UK company, have no UK presence, and don’t target UK customers,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “Most of our customers are located in North America and we have no plans to force them to pay a privacy price to prove their age unless US laws mandate it.”
Kitely added age restrictions back in 2018, when it began complying with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, and those restrictions apply to hypergrid visitors as well, Tochner said.
The grid also isn’t an adult service as the law defines it, he said. Users can only upload content to the sections of the service with the right maturity rating, and Kitely moderates content that breaks its terms of service.
“Our user base consists almost entirely of people decades older than the age at which someone would ask them for an ID if they tried to buy alcohol in a bar,” he said.
The hypergrid problem isn’t new
OpenSim has been here before. Back in 2012, a German company called X-Avatar offered an age verification module for OpenSim regions.
I couldn’t find any public discussion of the Wolf Territories statement on OpenSimWorld so far. But the question came up there last year, when Holoneon‘s Fiona Sweet proposed nearly the same rules that Wolf Territories has now adopted — age checks for local residents only, and hypergrid visitors limited to General-rated land.
“Since there are 24 US states and the UK requiring age verification it seems this is going to inevitably change the way OpenSimulator functions,” Sweet said in a post on OpenSimWorld.
That count is now up to 27 states, according to a list kept by the Age Verification Providers Association, the trade group for companies that sell age checks. The US Supreme Court upheld one of those laws, in Texas, in June 2025.
The US laws are mostly aimed at commercial pornography websites, and that is who has felt them so far. Pornhub’s owner, Aylo, has blocked access in more than 20 of those states instead of checking IDs. In the UK, all of the Ofcom fines for missing age checks have gone to pornography companies, and Pornhub stopped accepting new UK users in February.
I haven’t found a case of any of these laws being enforced against a virtual world.
Not everyone on OpenSimWorld agreed with Sweet’s proposal. One commenter, Jupiter Rowland, said that pushing visitors to create local accounts on every grid “will largely kill the hypergrid,” and that event venues that are rated Adult just to keep out child avatars would lose their crowds.
Second Life still takes your word for it
Linden Lab, owners of Second Life, hasn’t announced anything similar, as far as I can find.
Second Life residents get access to adult regions based on the birth date they gave at sign-up and a setting in the viewer preferences. There’s no ID check. The company’s terms and conditions do say that residents agree to submit to account verification if Linden Lab asks for it.
In March, Linden Lab opened a new Adult Hub without adding any age checks.
Other platforms are moving faster. VRChat said in June that it will roll out free age checks to UK users first, and that users who don’t pass as 18 or older won’t be able to turn off its filter for sexually suggestive content. And Roblox has required a facial age check or an ID from anyone who wants to use chat since January.
But each of those companies has one login system for all of its users. The hypergrid has hundreds of grids, each with its own accounts, and no way for one grid to vouch for a visitor’s age to another.
I asked Clevett what it would take to let hypergrid visitors back into Adult Content regions.
“We would need to have age verified users,” he said.
If you have anything to say about age checks on OpenSim grids, please share it in the comments below, or email me directly at [email protected].
