Slashdot Mirror
RockStar Speaks
JamesO writes "The alleged sex mini-game on the GTA San Andreas game disc, unlocked using the "Hot Coffee" mod, has been the news story of the week. Several investigations are now underway to determine if the allegations are true. Having kept pretty quiet on this issue, Rockstar has issued a statement clarifying their situation. Meanwhile, in Britain, GTA San Andreas was released with a BBFC rating of 18 in the UK, which makes it illegal to sell the game to anyone under the age of 18. The BBFC has stated that, as a result it does not feel they need to take any action, even if the sex mini game claims are found to be true. Such content would not require the game to be reclassified as it would in other territories where the game had not received a strict adult only rating."
It's all politicians...these people don't actually know anything about the real world. They just do what gets them the most attention, votes and money. If an actual parent sat down with GOW and GTA:SA they'd almost all say it's far more adult oriented..but the press only listens to the extremists and retards.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I would estimate that the outcry over this is not so much a 'now *this* is too adult' response; it's more a 'see *what else* this depraved game can do' response. In other words, new ammunition for an exsiting battle.
However, to drag this silly mod into the public eye weakens any argument against GTA. The issue at hand is the glorification of violent crime for amusement sake, and this is where the dialogue should remain.
It's worth noting that Americans, decendants of both Puritans and rebels/revolutionaries, have always struggled with this dichotomy of reveling in activities that are essentially immoral. GTA is simply the latest incident in this long running public debate, which has been going on at least since dime novels popularized the exploits of outlaws at the turn of the last century.
"Yes, Jayne, she's a witch. She's had congress with the beast..."
"She's in Congress?" - Firefly, "Objects in Space
If you're a decent human being you'll join me in comdemning this, and vote Republican!"
Has nothing to do with Republicans... a decade ago it was Al (and Tipper) Gore and Joe Lieberman trying to ban Doom. It's just politicians in general trying to get votes.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Rockstar's statement seems to be very carfully worded and avoids specifically clarifying if they they originally wrote the sex game.
I have downloaded the "Hot Coffee" mod (for research purposes only!), it does NOT patch the executable. There are 3 files in the mod: main.scm, script.img and sacensor.exe.
By doing a binary compare of main.scm and script.img with the originals they differ by only a few bytes, therefore the content for the sex games was already included in the game, all the files do is chnage a few flags to unlock it. It is not the genius coding effort of the century that Rockstar tries to imply by talking about disassembling and modifying the code.
As for sacensor.exe it is only needed if you don't want the whole game unlocked at the start (which the other files do). When sacensor.exe is used main.scm and script.img are not needed. Sacensor.exe has to be executed when San Andreas is running so it can make an in-memory alteration so it does not alter the code in any way either.
Rockstar's statement tries to give the impression that the sex mini-game was "created" by the hackers, and they talk about disassembling and modifying the code, but the mod does not even change the code just script files and art assets.
This seems similar to the dubious stance Tecmo took when they sued their fans at NinjaHacker.net for creating new costumes for Dead or Alive characters. In that situation Tecmo claimed the people at NinjaHacker had altered their source code when in fact all they had changed were the art assets.
But the material was included. It just wasn't accessible without the mod. I don't think RockStar ever denied this, so why should they start now?