Forget VPNs, Death Stranding's Photo Mode Defeats Age Verification On Reddit And Discord
A user, Dany Sterkhov, shared on X how he was able to skirt by Discord’s age verification with the help of a popular video game. He hopped into Death Stranding 2’s photo mode, pointed his phone at the screen when prompted to do so, and was then granted access to the service as an adult. Fancy that!
The reason it works is a combination of the verification process and the robustness of the game’s photo mode. Discord employs k-ID, which does try and make it more difficult by asking users to do things such as open their mouth. However, the photo mode in Death Stranding 2 gives players a wide range of control in how they pose characters, which is why it’s able to beat k-ID.
Now that this method is confirmed, it’s likely that k-ID will attempt to block users from using it. How so? Possibly by checking if the image being submitted matches any of the characters from the game. It would probably be similar to how the verification checks on Tinder work, where the service ensures that whatever is submitted for the check hasn’t been used in the past by someone else.
Of course, users could pivot to something else, such as Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman creator, which can generate realistic human avatars that rival what’s available in Death Stranding 2’s photo mode. The learning curve is far steeper, though, which could limit how useful it is for bypassing age verification.
It will be interesting to see how far the game of cat and mouse goes, with age verification processes becoming more widespread.
