Reddit and Discord’s UK age verification can be defeated by Death Stranding’s photo mode

Enforcement of the UK’s new online safety rules started on Friday, forcing a variety of platforms to roll out mandatory age verification tools for Brits. We already know that the age-gating checks are easy to bypass with a VPN, but what we didn’t know is that the face scanning tools used by platforms like Reddit and Discord can also be easily bypassed with Death Stranding’s photo mode.

Dany Sterkhov alerted the world to the Death Stranding bypass on Friday morning, and gamers have been using the photo mode and Sam Bridges to trick face scanning tools into accepting them as an adult all weekend. All you have to do is point your phone at your monitor with Death Stranding open, activate the in-game photo mode, and then get Sam to look at the camera.

I used this technique on Discord and the face scanning verification (k-ID) asked me to open and close Sam’s mouth, so I obliged using the facial expressions in the photo mode. I did the same thing on Reddit, but this time the face scanning tool (Persona) asked me to move Sam’s face around, so I panned the camera around until it was accepted. Both were completed within seconds, and it was unbelievably easy to bypass these age checks.

Discord uses the k-ID face verification service, while Reddit uses the Persona service. Both services were fooled by the virtual Sam Bridges. I tried to bypass Bluesky’s age verification, which uses the Yoti service, and it failed with the virtual Sam Bridges. Yoti says Instagram will also use its facial age estimation technology as an option “for people who need to prove they are over 18.”

This bypass not only lets adults verify as an adult on multiple services, but it also lets you avoid sharing your face or credit card details with yet another third-party company. It also means you don’t have to pay for a VPN service to continuously bypass these age checks, as long as the service you want to access offers a face scanning option that falls victim to the virtual Sam Bridges.