YouTube is strengthening its Community Guidelines around online gambling and graphic violence in gaming. Starting November 17, existing rules prohibiting content linking to online gambling sites or applications that are not certified by Google will also include links to sites involving digital goods with “monetary value,” including video game skins, cosmetics and NFTs. “Our policies are designed to evolve alongside the digital world,” Google says, explaining that the changes “keep pace with new trends, like gambling with digital goods, and to more closely align our guidelines for mature content with industry standards.”

YouTube’s heightened gambling scrutiny takes aim at so-called “social casinos.” “Content that depicts, promotes, or facilitates social casino sites will now be age-restricted,” Google writes on a YouTube Help thread.

Additionally, “gambling content that advertises third-party services for virtual items worth real money, like say, ‘Counter-Strike’ skins, will now be banned or have to be approved by Google on a case-by-case basis,” writes gaming site Kotaku.

As for the crackdown on excessive violence, YouTube’s existing restrictions will expand to include age-based prohibitions what the platform calls a “small subset of video game content featuring realistic human characters that focuses on scenes of torture or scenes of mass violence against non-combatants.”

Factors considered when reviewing such content includes:

• Duration: Is the graphic scene is sustained or fleeting? (with compilations assessed on “cumulative duration”)
• Prominence: Is the violent imagery the main focus of the scene or “zoomed-in”?
• Realism: Is the violence perpetrated on a character that looks realistically human?

Restrictions will affect those under 18 and signed-out users. The rule builds on existing protections against “violent or gory content intended to shock or disgust viewers, or content encouraging others to commit violent acts, are not allowed on YouTube,” the platform says in an explanatory Help post.

Kokatu says the age-restrictions on videos featuring violent imagery take aim at content “you might see in any standard playthrough of blockbuster video games like the upcoming ‘Grand Theft Auto 6.’”

The Verge quotes a Google spokesperson saying “there may be ways the creator can choose to play the mission to avoid content that would lead to an age restriction,” such as choosing to blur the violence.

Google’s action against violent imagery occurs against a backdrop of public and legislative outcry over the potential negative impact of violent visuals on children, but no existing federal or state restrictions (mainly due to free speech issues).

Online gambling, however, is vigorously state-regulated, as gambling in online casinos and fantasy leagues continues to grow. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, bill HR 3633, introduced in May, tackles the issue of “value” with regard to blockchain.

In March, Google undertook a significant policy update on gambling that, among other things, prohibited “creators from verbally referring to gambling services not approved by Google, [or] displaying their logos and linking to them in videos,” The Verge wrote at the time.