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ESRB Revokes San Andreas Rating
Alex Blonski writes "In a stunning move, the ESRB has advised retailers to stop selling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This report follows public pressure over the Hot Coffee debacle. Rockstar, the publishers of the game have given retailers the option of restickering the game with an 18+ rating or exchanging it for a new version with the controversial content removed. ESRB head Patricia Vance says 'After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that sexually explicit material exists in a fully rendered, unmodified form on the final discs of all three platform versions of the game (i.e., PC CD-ROM, Xbox and PS2). However, the material was programmed by Rockstar to be inaccessible to the player and they have stated that it was never intended to be made accessible. The material can only be accessed by downloading a software patch, created by an independent third party without Rockstar's permission, which is now freely available on the internet and through console accessories. Considering the existence of the undisclosed and highly pertinent content on the final discs, compounded by the broad distribution of the third party modification, the credibility and utility of the initial ESRB rating has been seriously undermined.'"
This makes me want to kill the ESRB board, but I will do one better, I will run around naked in front of them. Well at least now we have a new scapegoat, the Doom one was getting old...
In a move equally stunning to neglegent parents everywhere, Captain Obvious has advised that people stop paying attention to the ESRB and take a more proactive stance in monitoring the content that they're buying for their kids. He also advised that parents pay more attention to other aspects of games, such as violence and racial overtones, and not use sex alone as a deciding factor for whether or not to buy a game, movie, music CD, etc. Experts predict that people will ignore this advice and continue to rely on other people to raise their kids for them.
People found to be naked under clothes.
So is this the beginning of the end for the ESRB having any real power?
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
Merkins.
'Nuff said.
One can show pixel people gettin blown up by all kinds of pixel weapons, yet when there's one pixel nipple to be seen, the whole country goes up in arms about it?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php
I fail to see how someone could think that they don't deserve to see simulated sex after downloading the GTA:SA sex patch...
Le français vous intéresse?
"However, the material was programmed by Rockstar to be inaccessible to the player and they have stated that it was never intended to be made accessible."
Right. Sure.
What would the reason be to put it in there then? Perhaps the publicity that they are getting now? My 8 y/o son would not have known about GTA except that it has been in the news lately. (Yep, an 8 y/o that watches the news)
"Rockstar, the publishers of the game have given retailers the option of restickering the game with an 18+ rating or exchanging it for a new version with the controversial content removed."
Well, I suspect that most will put a sticker on the game and continue to sell as usual. I also suspect that if a 15 y/o wants to buy one, they still will be able to do so.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I believe that Penny Arcade's news and comic today sum up this whole situation best.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
GTA San Andreas "Hot Coffee"
s /hotcoffee.wmv
Coral Cache of some of the content in question:
http://files.gtanet.com.nyud.net:8090/gtasa/video
Get it while it's hot?
because of the "nude Sims" patch floating around?
...and watch as it sells even better than before. This publicity will only help sales.
This is awesome PR for Rockstar. They're lapping it up!
There's no such thing as bad publicity. Now it's an 18+ they'll sell twice as many copies!
The funniest thing is that all these people that raised a stink over the "Hot Coffee" mod are just bringing free publicity to an already very popular game. They're essentially giving Rockstar free advertising.
In GTA San Andreas, you can mow down innocent pedestrians one one side of the street whilst smashing up your stolen car. That's fine, that's an M rating for you. What? There's sex too?! Dear God man, pull it from the shelves!
Society depresses me.
This is rediciulous. What if I release a patch that will just replace the textures of any game (say Windows Solitair, or some Harry Potter game) with hardcore porn? Assume the patch becomes widespread after the game has been released.
Will this... organization... advise stores to stop sell this game too?
As a British person (of 15 years of age), I pity you Americans. What the fuck is your problem with the human body? Why an 18+ when the 17+ was appropriate for the game, even with the minigame?
Maybe I'm mistaken; I have gotten older since this system started with the Congressional worry over Mortal Kombat's finishing moves. But wasn't the rating system devised to just ADVISE parents of the content and not ,as is now common practice, actually restrict access to the game itself? Sigh, once again... It was rated M for Mature... Is putting an 18+ sticker on the box going to suddenly make a parent become a "concerned" parent?!?!?
Sure that web-site has content.. But so does a garbage can!
Why revoke the rating on the XBox/PS2. It is impossible to get to that content in these versions. Only way on the PC version is through a software patch. Sure the stuff is in there, but it isn't like Rockstar left this content open for anyone to access. I'm guessing this kind of stuff is more common in computer games than we even know. Just that this is the first one where someone was able to unlock that content.
Clearly in that critical year you become mature enough to be allowed to consume renderings of fully clothed individuals in sexual positions.
Seventeen year-olds just aren't ready for that kind of stuff yet. Their exposure to sexual situations should be limited to what they do with their boyfriends/girlfriends in the back seat of their parent's car when they're "at the movies."
Oh, BTW, to all the parents out there... Your 8 year old probably says 'fuck' all the time when he knows you're not around, so you can get over yourself already.
closes at 27.07, now at 25.50
ostiguy
I Can't believe Take-Two's reaction is to recall the game and start over. Wouldn't it make much more sense to just bump up the age rating by one year?
More news can be found on Take Two's Investor Relations page.
"I make people like me... WITH VIOLENCE!" - ATHF
and cue the court cases against Rockster.
The FCC will be investigating the "pixel malfunction" in GTASA, obviously.
So a bunch of people who are seeking it out figure out a way to (painfully) unlock some digital sex scenes... So lets uproot the world and make a big deal out of it to make sure that everyone sees it. sad...
All this time, I thought that 14-year-olds had sex because of hormones (or, in some rare cases, having actual feelings for another).
I just had to share that with you guys.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Totally, I am just worried that I won't be able to find the game anymore, if it goes off the shelves, or the EBay price gets jacked up. Of course, my SO and I have to finish GTA:VC first...
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Starting bid of $100 for this banned game.
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
Violence is American, sex and nakedness are both rather... um... French.
Considering that the script and media files are already out there, and that the game is relatively easy to mod, what is going to stop modders from releasing slightly more elaborate patches that will put the hot coffee mission right back in GTA SA 1.1?
Won't this blow up in Rockstar's face again when hot coffee sex starts showing up in the modified version of the game?
We live in a culture which embraces violence and shuns sexuality.
Today's Penny Arcade news deals with this, where Tycho lays out the crucial difference between a "Mature" title and an "Adults Only" title : time.
Yup, that's it. Time. Pretty incredible.
-EvilMagnus
...and add it to the ESRB rating to derive the actual rating.
From TFA:
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO - News) announced today that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has changed the rating of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on all platforms from "Mature 17+" (M) to "Adults Only 18+"
So basically, they've made the decision that 17 year-olds just shouldn't see this two-bit low-res porn hack, and stick with the carjacking, wanton murder, and other wholesome activites within GTA. 18 year-olds are qualified for the whole ball o' wax, though.
Amazing...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
15yo kids are having sex in all the imaginable forms (so much that they're been taught about sex, contraceptives and abortion at 12) - and we're worried because a game (where you can batter an old man to death) has sex scenes?
Something's not logical in here. I still can't find out what it is, i just know something's wrong. If anybody can give some insight, he'd be gladly welcome.
17 year old: "I'm going to kill someone"
Authority Figure: "That's great... don't really care..."
17 year old: "Huh! BOOBIES!!!"
Authority Figure: "What's this?!" *beats 17 year old with a stick until he turns 18* "now you can look at all the pornography you want"
Meanwhile I get lots of naughty SPAM without an ID check, and even google images turns up stuff that will make my eyeballs melt out of my head. Not to mention that the URL bar in my browser is very dangerous, and should be banned. And have you even tried running the WebCollage screen saver? Where's the ESRB been?
Would such a stink be caused over fairly benign sexual content in a game - and a game called GRAND THEFT AUTO, where apparently it is perfectly acceptable to run down the street with a minigun blowing away cops and law enforcement with abandon - but throw in a blowjob, and the world is ending!
HOLY CRAP WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!
The only thing that would make this more amusing.. is if it was a homosexual mod for the game; I can imagine they'd be burning copies of the game in the Fry's parking lot. Makes me wish I had the time to hack something like that together.. oh my.
It's a game for adults, not kids. Is this not crystal clear? Slippery slope, people..
..don't panic
Is it the MPAA's fault for rating Disney's "The Rescuer's" G when there were pictures of naked women in the movie?
How about the original poster of Disney's "The Little Mermaid" containing a penis?
The code wasn't meant to be seen and can't be seen in the normal course of the game without running a special patch. Whereas the x rated material in the Disney stuff was right out in the open.
But somehow the ESRB is "undermined" because they didn't look for hidden easter eggs?
More likely this is the DEATH KNELL for easter eggs period!
I find this hidden World of Warcraft sex/nude content more surprising. That game is supposed to be rated T.
Honestly, who cares that 17 year olds might see some crappy animated porn in GTA? It's just a opportunity for Clinton to come down hard on something she's been whining about for years.
I just have to get a copy of that game!
Does this mean any game can be banned if a mod is made available to create mature situations?
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
This whole debacle is bad news. If retailers don't stop selling it, we're all in trouble. If the ESRB loses all credibility, the only thing stopping a full-on onslaught of legislative parenting will be gone. If the video game industry 'can't be trusted' to rule itself, the government will have to step in. Australia-like bans will be coming to a USA and Canada near you.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
Nobody is doing this that doesn't know full well what they're after. And if we're talking about underage players, well... it's Mom and Dad's responsibility to know what their kids are doing, not the retailers.
If you're not old enough to see a nipple, chances are you shouldnt be playing GTA:SA anyway, modded or otherwise.
VOTE!
The human body or two human bodies performing sexual acts?
There is quite a difference between the two.
We wouldn't want millions and millions of copies floating around out there being played by innocent children everywhere, now would we?
I got my copy for PC, found out about Hot Coffee about 3 days later... still haven't tried it, there's so much more interesting stuff to do in the game. I can't believe they folded this easy.
Where's the xbox and ps2 patches/hacks?
I hate playing console games on the PC as much as I'd hate playing zork on a NES.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I found a patch in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pornstars that allows me to see naked chicks on ANY computer connected to the Internets!
Bicycles are made illegal because children can go on the Internet and download porn.
So, if content that was never meant to be seen and no normal person would ever have discovered is now fair game for ratings, doesn't this mean that every animated movie where the artists got a bit bored and hid something naughty in one frame should now be rerated to R?
(Admittedly, Roger Rabbit was already not a G movie, but I've heard rumors at least of various frames in kiddie disney movies....)
Like the subject says. They are useless, and really should not exist.
"highly pertinent content"
prurient maybe?
What else could you expect from a country settled by people who left their old country because church wasn't strict enough?[1][2]
[1] I'm American, and enjoy it. Things are slowly loosening up (you can show pregnant women on TV now!)
[2] Yes, I know that's not EXACTLY why they left, but it makes my point.
You have to go out of your way to display this content, and then when you do get it it's just PG-13 rated dry humping. How does that equal 18+? And why exactly is this better than the 17+ rating it already had? It makes no sense.
I can get sex in a patch now? Like Nicorette?
That would save a lot of wrist strain.
Now this AC is more insightful than the prepubescent Brit kid.
The ESRB has just signed their own death warrent. This move with eventually render them obsolete as publishers drop ratings, or list them theirselves on the box. I mean seriously, do you think people will end up not buying one of the hottest franchises of all time just because the ESRB logo isn't on the box? What's more likely to survive? There were video game rating methods before the ESRB. Games will continue on without them if necessary.
parents didnt give a damn that there is a game shooting and killing cops, stealing cars, and beating up random people. this is okay for a child to play. but god damn it, there better not be a nipple in there or there will be hell to pay.i would love someone on here to post(and be serious about it) something that would back up the actions of these people. i want to hold a conversation with a person that can honestly say 'you can shoot and kill all the people you like. just dont have sex because that will corrupt the children'
The more hardcore a gamer is, the smaller the chance of him ever having sex. Go tell your grandpa that.
Bad things happen to stupid people ... if they knowingly distributed porn through interstate commerce to minors, no amount of saying 'Oh but we never intended for them to actually *see* it when we put it on the disk' doubletalk will save their asses .... it is hard to imagine how much this is going to cost them.
It pisses me off that Rockstar has lied about this from day one, claiming that the content wasn't in the game and had been inserted by hackers. They deserve whatever bad things happen to them as a result of this. If they had come clean, said our programmer did it and we didn't know, we've fired him, at least they would maintain their self respect (assuming that's what happened).
But no, they had to resort to a cowardly and foolish lie, a lie which would inevitably be found out. They deserve no respect at all.
I can't understand what you're worrying about. I live in the netherlands, and there surely is nothing like such trouble here. Whats wrong with showing parts of the human body? Don't kids get that at school too? A twelve-year-old could get GTA:SA here. They don't want that - but if they don't want children to buy it, it's because of the violence - not about the naked skin that's in it. Really, I can't understand this.
After all, some things that weren't obvious on the first viewing are clearly harmful to children on closer inspection and slight modification of usual use. Fucking censorship morons. I just love the fact that in this county it's ok to show graphic images of people being killed, but not people being fucked. This is pathetic.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
This could spell out some big problems for coders when they take their easter eggs too far. Of course, what else is on the average programmers mind?
does that mean we can start sueing linux distros becuse they don't have a content rating - have you read the doc's, my god there.. there is something that needs a mature rating really i don't get the big deal.. who is the government to decided what minors can see, i always thought that it was the parents job but you never know.. the way we have been out sourcing lately that job might go to china.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
The thing that amuses me the most about this whole episode is that senators and other publicity hounds never noticed the game when it was just violence, madness and mayhem, but shock of shocks, a character "gets a cup of coffee" and skin friction ensues, and the next thing you know, this is the worst thing that could ever possibly have happened to our kids!
Me, I would prefer my kid watch a porn flick any day rather than "Natural Born Killers" or play a video game with tawdry pixels as opposed to trying to see how many crimes can be committed in order to get a high score.
After all, who gets hurt by a good (consensual) boffing?
Well, yeah, I know about sex and responsiblity. So spare me the usual screed. But if you do, pleas explain at the same time a way to "responsibly" carjack or murder someone.
What retailer is going stop selling something that they can make money selling? And if they did, wouldn't that just drive business to their competitors who will keep selling the game. Who cares what the ESRB does? Not the people buying the games and not the people selling the games. On the other side of things, Rockstar just got a week of free publicity. They're probably just gave the guy who wrote the content a raise.
the first company to abuse the voluntary ESRB rating sytstem definatly got what they deserved. whether or not san andreas really deserves the AO rating, rockstar deserves being punished for all they are worth.
#1 they blatantly lied to the ESRB, saying that that scene was not put in the retail versions of the game. they said that the mod could only be utilized if you used extensive third party code, which WASN'T true, gamespot did it with a freaking action replay. #2 they abused the ESRB's voluntary rating system. on the questionnaire, they lied about what type of sexual content the game posessed. #3 now rockstar has screwed over the whole game industry, getting hillary clinton on everyone's ass as usual.
rockstar projects losing $10 million in revenue and losing 45 cents per share instead of 40 (they are currently losing money) due to loss in sales. i hope investors unload all their stock (not sure if these stats apply for rockstar or take two, rockstar's publisher and/or owner)
In a related item Sex in the City actors we arrested for performing simluated sex within city limits. The ESBRFDAKMPLFDAGKRSG has changed the rating of Sex in the City from cheap Softcore porn to slighly higher budget softcore porn.
Also countless car, chewing gum, beer, shoe, clothing, personal ads, viagra, and 42 soap operas in 26 languages have also been upgraded to cheap softcore porn. Thank you.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Now that they changed the rating to Adult only, why not stick the content into the game now? If you are wrongfully punished, then you might as well commit the act you were punished for.
some retailers (including Wal-Mart) refuse to sell AO games, so I can fully see a Rockstar manager or exec going, "if we leave in this mini-game, we're going to get an AO tag and lose $XXX million. Take it out."
A lot of DVD Video titles sold in the United States have both CARA-rated and unrated versions. A lot of records sold in the United States have both Parental Advisory and edited versions. Would it have been so hard to make GTA San Andreas (M) for retail sale and GTA San Andreas: Director's Cut (AO) for mail order? Or do Sony and Microsoft frown on AO titles as much as Nintendo does?
"This makes absolutely no difference because the content was just as inaccessible to the player."
Anyway, think of it this way, if you will. (Hehe, here comes the stretched analogy.)
If you sell someone a decorative glass bottle of hydrogen cyanide, even if you tell them not to open it, you're still going to be treated as if you're selling them cyanide. On the other hand, if you sell decorative glass bottles and someone comes out with an "easy cyanide refill" pack, you're not going to be held accountable for selling people cyanide.
Now, sure, in either case, you're not intending to poison anyone. However, the fact that you packaged the cyanide in the bottle is going to rather significantly hurt your case.
(And the rather stretched part of the analogy is that game content and poisons are not even remotely alike, but hey.)
In other news...
Hillary Clinton (who makes ~$162k http://people.howstuffworks.com/question449.htm) has decided that it's in her best interest to waste her time (and our tax dollars). I'm sure that the FTC has better things to do than to investigate RockStar Entertainment... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4682533.stm
i mean really. if a kid can download and apply a patch, he is already in a position to see way more nudity than what is offered in this game.
you may think that's a strawman, bringing up internet porn, but think about it. the point of the ESRB rating is to inform the parents of the content of the game. which, in my opinion, the "M" rating did accurately. the sex scenes aren't in the game. they were disabled.
from a parent's standpoint, what is the difference between downloading a third-party mod that enables disabled content, and applying a third-party mod that adds newly-created content? they are identical in their difficulty/accessibility to a kid, and both insert content into the game that the developer did not intend to appear there!
it is drawing boobies on the title page of "Harry Potter" and then sueing JK Rowling, citing an unfinished but steamy scene she deleted from her hard drive as evidence.
i could live a little longer in this prison
The game allows you to...
- Pull people out of their cars and drive away in them
- Steal military weapons
- Destroy property
- Injure and kill completely innocent bystanders
- Develop a criminal enterprise
- Carry out the orders of corrupt police officers
- Pick up prostitutes
- Burn down a pot farm
and so far it's been pretty smooth sailing, but once you can have vivid consensual sex, but only through extensive third party modification, everyone flips out?!Borrowing a definition from copyright law, I think part of the difference between nude mods (which replace textures) and door unlock mods (which change the state of one door) is whether the changes are substantial enough to result in the modified computer program becoming a "new work".
Am I the only one completely overwhelmed by the sheer idiocy of this situation?
I mean ignoring the fact that violence is alright while sexual intercourse sparks a massive outrage.
The content is UNPLAYABLE!!! It cannot be played! If you get a copy of the game can you just pop it in and see this naughty content?
No.
Why?
Because it's UNPLAYABLE!!
Wait!! You mean you can download something off the internet that lets you play this naughty content **GASP** What an outrage!! That someone going onto the internet could gain access to pornographic content. It's completely unheard of. Clearly this is a matter of national importance that a game can be made pornographic with things downloaded off the internet!
This whole situation is just a bizarre combination of sexual prudism combined with a complete lack of technical knowledge, I'm ashamed to be on the same continent where stuff this ignorent stupidity occurs.
I stole this Sig
This is a political "save our own asses" discision by the ESRB. They want to avoid any potential shitstorms so they are going to blame Rockstar for the whole affair to look like they are taking it seriously.
Meanwhile, the majority of the USA doesn't give two shits.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
In other news, the ESRB are re-rating Doom 3, for possible hardcore anal scenes between zombies.
Nothing has too high of a price.
Vince Foster would tell us all about that. If he weren't dead, of course.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The SIMS has an ESRB rating of E-T (Everyone/Teens). However, there is a patch available for The SIMS that removes the dithering done when they are changing clothes, allowing one to see buck naked SIMS!. Doesn't this mean the ESRB should also revoke The SIMS "Everyone" rating?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is it just me, or has the ESRB just ensured that it can no longer argue its way out of mandatory goverment ratings - since it changes its own ratings and can't rate things properly the first time?
Personally, I think this is the right move for the ESRB and the industry as a whole. There's a whole group of people who want "the government" to start regulating video games (and movies, and TV, and books, and thought, and...). The industry always claims they can police themselves, given the chance. Well, here we had a video game maker shipping some dirty pictures in their game. Sure, they were disabled by default, but they were there. All you had to do was "rip off the cover", so to speak. Per modern mainstream American culture (right or wrong), and the ESRB's definitions ("graphic sexual content"), that's "Adults Only". It should be marked as such. Rockstar broke the industry's rules, and the industry is slapping them down because of it. Good. They should. If the industry wants to claim they can take care of themselves, they need to back it up with action.
Does this mean more games should be rated "Adults Only"? Prolly. Also to the good, IMO. If the shoe fits, wear it.
Does this mean parents shouldn't also be blamed for not paying closer attention? No. Parents (in general) should pay much closer attention to what their kids are watching, playing, and doing. They should spend more time being parents, in other words.
But two wrongs don't make a right, and Rockstar deserves what they got.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I can't believe that Rockstar fucked up like this. This is ridiculous. I really hope that this isn't some lame publicity stunt.
They knew that this game was going to be heavily scrutinized by every Chicken Little culture warrior in the world (sans Al Quaeda, who I'm willing bet don't care), and what do they do? They put porn in the game! Agggh!
Do they want federal regulation of video games? It's not as if the 1st amendment is going to shield game-makers -- there've been plenty of court cases where the judge ruled that games aren't expression and aren't protected (alright, maybe just the one, but you know what I mean). Clinton is practically shitting her pants over this, and I bet the only reason that Lieberman hasn't jumped in is because he's too busy jacking off at the thought of all the legislation he can pass now.
I mean, yeah it's kind of weird that the most troubling part of this game for people isn't the decapitations, but rather crude, fully clothed polygonal eroticism. But still! What were they thinking? And then that bullshit lie about how 3vil h4Xorz "cracked the source code", using their magic wands to just create all stuff.
Rockstar was retarded about this in two ways. First, they left it in the game. Of course some intrepid modders will find it! Hell, some people pretty much made up their own ending for KotOR2. Why couldn't they take the five minutes to just boot that shit from the code? Now they've made the ESRB look like morons (not that hard, admittedly) and gamemakers look like rapacious fiends, eagerly trying to corrupt our youth.
Second, they fucking lied about it. That's the part that gets me. That they just sat there and said nothing, and then lied until that became impossible.
Seriously, I have doubts that this is accidental. But on the other hand, this is way too stupid to be a publicity stunt. Maybe Hilary paid them off?
I think this whole thing was an intentional stunt by Rockstar to boost sales and get free advertising.
If in fact this was done with intent, and Rockstar gets sued, watch a judge award punitive damages.
So, now what? The ESRB is going to have to learn assembly and comb through game code to see if there is any content present which the manufacturer put in but has rendered inaccesable? What a bunch of pussified dumbshits. The politicians brought their usual think of the children shitrain down on them and they caved. "The rating has been undermined"...in what way has the rating of the shipping game been undermined????
Stupid Politicians 1 Freedom 0
How long now until every parent that was mislead by the ESRB rating allowed their minor children to purchase the game, and later be subjected to the pornographic material. Rockstar should be 100% liable for those damages. Not that the game wasn't already out their on the edge of what most would consider morally acceptable.
God, Root, Whats the difference?
This ridiculous minigame doesn't bother me in the least and I know it doesn't bother the majority of you in the least, but this is a big deal. This latest move may reduce some of the damage, but basically Rockstar has screwed the game industry with this. The material was clearly cut in order to avoid getting an AO rating and leaving it on the disc in any form was supremely stupid.
There are a lot of people out there who think that corrupting youths should be considered a serious crime. You can say that parents should be responsible for their own children, but these people think that since children still constitute a significant portion of the video game market that video games should not contain content that could "corrupt" them. I don't agree with this and most of you don't agree with this either. However, as things stand now we have to live with these people that we disagree with.
Strengthening the ratings system is the best hope that we have for coexisting with these people. If the rating system can be made more effective we may be able to reach an understanding so that these people feel satisfied that their children are safe while allowing games marketed to adults to be unfettered. Rockstar leaving the Hot Coffee game on the disc has undermined what little faith there was in the rating system and there may be some serious repercussions. We could be talking about things like games being banned or class action lawsuits. That would of course, be a very bad thing for the game industry as a whole.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
In Soviet Russia, Ratings Board revokes YOU!!
I do think they considered putting it into the game from the start. They no doubt removed it thinking about what the probable AO rating would do to sales.
Let's face it - the "M" rating doesn't count for much (parents still think it's just a game), but AO for a major console game like GTA would get big headlines which would no doubt mention the sex games in it, and that content would have put it right off of many parents' Christmas buying list. (And yes, this would hurt Rockstar, probably more than they care to admit.) And, no, I don't think now most retailers will be able to sell it like they used to. (They have to worry that a 'investigative news reporter' might try to have their son buy the game then plaster that all over the 10 o'clock news.)
Leaving it in the game was probably 1) easiser, and 2) the developers thought it wouldn't hurt too much if someone did hack it (and furthermore probably thought it'd be 'cool' if someone did), because they probably didn't realize how far it would spread.
To be honest, though, I think the ESRB did the right thing here. (Though frankly, I think the violence is just as deserving of the rating as the sex is.) Otherwise, game developers could put all the nasty content into a 'locked' hack that they could later 'anonymously' have someone post the patch to. Voila, an easy way to get a T rating or less and put things like sex in it. The ESRB really did have to react in order to prevent these kinds of things from happening or being commonplace.
Here's an idea for developers: make and sell a T and AO version of the game. An "Uncut" version, so to speak, with more gore and nudity and/or sex, or whatever. This way kids can't complain that they can't play cool games because they're only for adults, and adults can't complain that all the games out there are 'censored' for kids.
It's not just because of the sex:
"Oh baby lets get married"
"Girl, you should do this for a living"
"I ain't insecure, but tell me how good I am"
Kids can be complete morons about sex and relationships, and here we have an utterly tasteless porno-style two hands bobbin the girl's head scene with sexist dialogue that encourages idiotic behavior.
If we had some sort of sex ed or relationship education in the US, I wouldn't agree with the ESRB, but there's a difference between things kids know that they are obviously not supposed to do (like running over people in cars, etc), smacking people around, and actually encouraging interest in legal but dysfunctional behavior with stupid-beyond-belief dialogue because the girl 'really' likes that sort of thing.
Yet the ESRB are getting worked up over a mod that that is similar yet tamer than the sex scene in Team America and even less erotic.
How fucking ridiculous is that?
So, let me get this straight. You provide digital entertainment content of some kind to your customers. I make it possible for your customers to make it possible to replace it with material thqt would carry a "more mature" rating. You have to rerate your distribution media.
Yo, Disney! How much you gonna pay me to not tell people how to overwrite their "Lion King" video tapes with copies of "Debbie Does Dallas"? After all, having to re-rate all those "Lion King" VHS cassettes would cost you, no?
Sheesh.
And before someone points out that the offensive content was already there, just unaccessable, offensive content is always there on digital media, but inaccessable: ah, the magic of XOR to reveal it.
Idiots.
You could've hired me.
I look forward to the day when tits and guns are both so prevalent that art is, once again, art.
After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that sexually explicit material exists in a fully rendered, unmodified form on the final discs of all three platform versions of the game (i.e., PC CD-ROM, Xbox and PS2).
I'm shocked and offended that my PS2 version of GTA:SA includes hot coffee mode. Now, how do I gain access to it?
I agree with the posts upset over the fact that companies are getting slammed over parents' inability to parent, but at the same time, I think there should be at least some modicum of responsibility on the developer's part, especially when it is found that the developer knew that objectionable material existed and was not forthcoming about the existence of that material (to the point of gutless blameshifting that only makes them look more culpable once it was found that the underlying code existed on all platform versions). If Rockstar had no intention of allowing that content to be released THEN WHY DID THEY LEAVE IT IN THERE? I can understand if it was a single programmer (or maybe team) that threw in an objectionable minigame, though that seems unlikely to me, but that's not Rockstar's story so far.
Personally, I like a nice, cathartic, violent kill-fest first person shooter, and even had a lot of fun playing GTA3 and GTA:VC. I haven't played San Andreas, but this type of behaviour on Rockstar's part doesn't make me want to shell out cash to buy it now. This smells like someone wanted to include something and attempted to beat an ESRB rating by putting it in as an easter egg. Maybe possibly someone trying to challenge the ESRB's system itself; too bad for them, they've now got egg on their face.
And as someone already said, Penny Arcade's article and comic sum up the situation pretty nicely.
#define CLUE 0
Looking for some "Hot Coffee?" I've got your goods right here, ladies and gentlemen! One copy of Rockstar's controversial, pornography-laden software in mint condition with all original packaging and incorrect ESRB "M" rating! Use the Buy-It-Now! option and I will throw in a floppy disk containing the evil, ungodly "Hot Coffee" modification with which you can experience maximum pornographic pleasure! See blocky character models in underpants gyrate in ways that would make Jesus strike you down on the spot unless you're over eighteen! He's OK with the killing, though, assuming you're at least seventeen.
Seriously though, I still don't get what the brouhaha is all about. Must be because I'm Canadian. I was flipping channels at around 9PM the other day between Tour de France coverage and the Life network was showing some sexual secrets program. The only difference between what they were showing on cable TV and XXX porn was actual entry shots. Now, I don't know if maybe cable is some kind age differentiation system, but it seems to me like anyone of any age, including people under eighteen, could have happened on that pretty graphic sexual content and possibly have gone blind!
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Rockstar makes some interesting games, but nothing that is really innovative or brilliant. Resorting to stupid tricks like in-game blowjobs is pretty dumb, and doesn't indicate a very high level of professionalism in the managing staff at Rockstar. It's like they modeled a porn scene (and badly at that). Bravo, very creative! I play games because they're unique and exciting. I don't see Rockstar's games as "art" or "free speech". I see them as lame.
Was it an easter egg?
Did the higher ups at Rockstar know it was there?
If not, you have to wonder if heads are going to roll.
Gone from Amazon's site, but Newegg took my order. Hot!
Try to RTFA next time.
From Rockstar's statement:
"...hackers created the 'hot coffee' modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game's source code. Since the 'hot coffee' scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse engineering of the game's source code..."
They never said the content was inserted, they said the game was modified, which is true.
However, the nude skin for the female model WAS added by the modders, so even though they didn't say it, there WAS content inserted by the hackers.
Hilary Clinton is a stupid bitch that deserves to die a slow and painful death. Anyone with the mentality that "everyone in society should participate in raising my child and should share the blame and responsibility for his actions when I allow him to play ADULT themed video games" should immediately be shot in the face at least 15 times and have glass shards forced down their throat while having an incredibly old and splintery piece of wood shoved up their ass.
Accountability
Responsibility
These words have been lost in time, their meanings forgotten over years of "it takes a village to raise a child" bullshit. Guess what hippies, we don't live in a village, we live in a country with almost 300 million fucking people and the United States is not a fucking daycare. Parents used to be forced to take responsibility for their children. Now everyone seems to think its ok for bad parents to just point their fingers back at society with bullshit explanations like "my child is a murderer because while I was out on the street turning tricks to pay for my crack addiction he was playing a video game where you murder people that I bought him to keep his mouth shut while mommy freebased herself a snack".
When a kid goes and finds his dad's gun and uses it to shoot a cop, don't blame GTA, blame the stupid fuck parents who didn't teach the kid right from wrong, the value of life, the difference between reality and fantasy, gun control and safety, and that ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
On another note, I don't understand how they can revoke a rating for San Andreas "due to unauthorized third party "Hot Coffee" modification". There are a handful of guns that can easily be modified into fully automatic weapons, yet those manufacturers aren't held responsible. But some 8 year old playing a game with a Mature rating goes onto the INTERNET and finds a patch for nudity? Nudity on the internet, what is the world coming to...
Also, I didn't hear a big stink about all those nudity patches that came out for the various releases of The Sims.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
From what I understand the sex scenes aren't even particularly explicit. Who does it with their clothes on, I mean really?
Oh wait, considering how objectionable these people seem to think this scene is, they probably ARE the type of people who do it with their clothes on.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
maybe I should run out and buy copies of the game before the news gets around it may be worth something
- Completely innocent game
- Pornographic only if you make substantial changes (eg. a skinnable game where you can replace clothing textures with skin textures)
- Pornographic if you make a relatively substantial hack (eg. the game renders humans with clothing layer by layer but if you remove the calls to the functions for the outer layers it renders humans in bare skin)
- Pornographic only if you make a small hack to the executable (This case)
- Pornographic only if you enter certain unpublished commands
- Overtly pornographic
It's always interesting when you have a slope like this to see where different people will draw the line. I think (3) is the most interesting possibility but (4) is vaguely interesting too.Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This whole thing reminds me of the totally illogical thinking of the RIAA in their recent legal action. The children they are worried about that are capable of downloading the Hot Coffee mod, are just as internet savvy to go download hardcore porn.
Well see, it's really quite obvious. Violence can be shown easily, so it must be a natural thing, and as a natural thing there is no harm in showing it.
Lesson: Sex is completely unnatural.
that without some outside controls, TV content would be dictated solely by the advertisers. And as the advertisers have shown themselves to be such a wonderful, responsible bunch in the quest for ever higher ratings and watercooler talk (read your eyeballs), the only option left to parents would be hardwiring the power switch to the off position. (Not necessarily a bad thing, but probably not what we really want)
Well, if thats the case... surely for all these 'nude patches' that can be added to the sims - the same principle should apply.
Imo its silly - games creators have code that is inaccessible - instead of remove it, just stop the software ver getting to it.
Surely, as adults (as the game is rated 18 over here) then we know about sex and there shouldn't be a problem - its all these parents that buy rated games for their kids. These things are rated for a reason.
Tim (http://tim.igoe.me.uk)
Computers are like Air-con, open windows and they stop working!
The penalty costs to RockStar are staggering.
For example, they might sell GTA SA to a big-box store for $20.00 ea. For each game in inventory, the retailer demands $20.00 plus a return processing fee, (20% per copy?) plus they're probably not going to actually get anything back from the retailer anytime soon because the retailer's supply chain doesn't work like that.
Add to that the shelf-space fee they'll charge for putting the sanitized version back on the shelf, plus a likely free first order and the big box has just done very very well.
Do that for each chain in the first or second tier of retailers and RockStar pays dearly.
Does anyone know on average how many units are in the channel at any given time?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
i know there are supposed to be at least 18 other AO rated games in existence, but i've never seen any of them in stores. yes, i know its because stores won't carry them. that said, does anyone know which games have actually gotten AO rating?
The flaw in your analogy is clear: Accidents happen and bottles can break, releasing the illicit substance. There is nothing the player can do short of a direct and intentional modification that causes this code to become active.
Here's what my GTA:SA PS2 ESRB rating says:
MATURE 17+
Blood and Gore
Intense Violence
Strong Language
Strong Sexual Content
Use of Drugs
Coffee or no coffee, this is sufficient information for parents to decide whether little Johnny can play this game. As much as I love the GTA series, I have a four year old and a seven year old, and they don't get to watch me play this, let alone play it themselves.
This just goes to show how screwed up the priorities of the human race are. You can steal stuff, and you can kill people, but GOD FORBID YOU GET NAKED OR HAVE SEX!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The internet has been banned because of the possibility that children may buy bicycles online.
It's nice that the ERSB decided to revoke the rating on GTA, but will the stores actually remove the title from their shelves? I don't think so. It would be more profitable to sell out what they have on hand since it now has a reputation. The stores need to be legally responsible for enforcing the ratings the same way stores are required to enforce the age restrictions for selling smokes and booze.
- Programmers
- Content Managers (and minions)
- Artists and Animators
- Game Designers/Script Writers
- Script Programmers
This means probably at least a dozen people within Rockstar worked on this content, in the state you see it now. They knew it existed, and they did not remove it. Rockstar flatly lied about the content not being in the game originally. This ruling in no way says that added content can change a game's rating; it does say content on the product disk can, which makes full sense.
As for people criticizing the rating change, it's actually good that the ESRB has the balls to start enforcing its ratings now. What they need to do though is cut the crap with "17+" and "18+" ratings and just bump Mature games to AO. Since obviously pornography is not going to be sold to anyone under 18 and that's not negociable, do the people complaining about "inconsistancy" really want violent games (Doom 3, HL2, RE4, etc.) to all be rated 18+ as well? I wouldn't mind that (and I say this as a game developper by profession), but wouldn't you?
If you are going to complain about something, at least grace the reader with your proposed solution and its consequences and why it is better than how things are.
I made a mod for the new "M" rated GTA that changes all the skins to have 12 foot dongs hanging out of their pants!
We better send this one to the ESRB as well because of the wide availability of my modification!
ESRB buckle under government pressure? NEVER!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Think about it. GTA is the perfect medium by which to teach guys how to *really* pleasure a woman. As long as the gameplay makes you work for the woman's orgasm, meaning you're going to have to work those controls for more than 5 minutes guys, I say bring it on.
GTA: Turning Geeks into Better Lovers
~tokengeekgrrl
Viewing this "adult" material requires downloading a patch from the internet. All sights containing this patch should be rated "adult-only", no? So by definition, to view this material, you need to have unfettered access to the internet... in which case you can view previews of hundreds if not thousands of for more prurient videos! It's like saying a jpeg should be x-rated because there is a steganographic encoding of a XXX movie script in the background. At some point, with sufficiently sophisticated filters, you can start interpreting random noise as pornography, like in the book "Subliminal Seduction". Where do you draw the line?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
From his excellent site:
Prog1: "Hey.. Check out the modification of the minigames I did.. you get to 'do it' with Denise!!!"
Prog2: "Cool Dude!!!"
Fast Forward 6 - 12 months:
Prog2: "Say man you did erase that ahem, minigame, with Denise from the source-code, right?"
Prog1: "Cr@p! I /*-ed the routines that would let you get to it... I mean, it's totally unaccessable, completely so on the consoles!!!"
I admit, I have actually watched the hot coffee video. It REALLY looks bad, badly animated, badly texture, brillo pads for under-arm hair, really bad stuff. In fact it looks like a very badly put together in-house modification of the bench-press workout routine where, instead of pushing two buttons at the correct times you tap left and right at the correct times. However, instead of the polished look that the rest of the game has this looks much more like something a wise-ass programmer slapped together over an uneventful lunch hour. Something a supervisor would roll their eyes over and proclaim loudly, "Get back to work!". The fact that it was programatically locked away means that it was most likely forgotten about during beta-testing and the sleep-depriving production rush. This should be a lesson to lazy programmers, not a Congressional taxpayer funded investigation!
Sure that web-site has content.. But so does a garbage can!
as a success for Hillary Clinton. Teenagers everywhere will stop having sex after Ms. Clinton's courageous fight against the mature video game industry.
pwned by a third party patch
Is Rockstar going to sue the Mod writer? Rockstar and Take-Two are taking a pretty good hit financially on this now. This sounds right up the DMCA's alley.
If they do, it will kill modding and extra revenue that brings in. Of course if they don't, it will appear as if the Hot Coffee content was intentional.
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
My god, this is the whole Janet Jackson crap all over again.
First off, without the third-party code this content is completely inaccessable. Hence, it really shouldn't be a problem for the ESRB.
They buckled to political pressure, and that is what is wrong here. The ESRB is an independent organization designed to offer suggestions on what people should be playing their games, since that's all ratings are.
How about we just have two ratings. GK and NGK: Good for Kids, and Not Good for Kids.
That way it's clear to any idiot out there that some games just aren't meant for people too young to handle the content.
But wait! Age doesn't determine who's mature enough.
How about we keep the rating for GTA and just issue a press release saying in so many words that
"The people who want the rating changed are not our core consumers, nor are they any form of expert on what is and is not decent. We will not change the rating just because you don't understand the situation. And we would like to say to those who criticize us for this decision to go out into the world and find out how technology works before jumping on our backs."
Where's the link to which we can send letters to the ESRB?
Does this apply to boardgames too? Because I was able to draw naughty pictures all over a game of Monopoly... I'd like that game to be rated "Adults Only" now. Who can I contact at the ESRB?
Esoteric reference.
The whole reason that people are even challenging this is that there are a lot of uppity people that hate GTA and Rockstar for making it. They don't really care about the rating, they want it banned. So what does this do? Well many stores, but most importantly Walmart (that's where the most games are sold) flat out refuse to stock AO and unrated titles. No consideration at all, if it's AO it's not stocked.
Well, that means that getting this promoted to AO would effectively cut it from a large segment of the market. In reality, of course, Rockstar will deal with it, but that's their real goal here.
The other part of it is they want governmental mandadte. ESRB ratings, just like MPAA ratings, are 100% voluntary. The industry established it, and they choose to self-rate. That pisses the activist groups off because they can't control it, if there's something they don't like that the ratings group decides is fine, nothing they can do. So they want the government to step in and take over, because they can put pressure on politicians.
... in about 10 minutes, after I finish this staff meeting I'm in.
What group initially raised a stink about this? Those pious asshats in the "Parents Television Council" again?
OK, so,
Rockstar's developers created this content. That much is clear. It's on their discs.
I guess the question is whether this is intentional. Hear me out before you dismiss this as a lunatic post.
You ever work on software? Did it ever amuse you to put amusing error messages like "If you ever see this error, then I really f$cked up," or "goddammit, I thought I fixed this in the last version!" in your code? Of course you have--it's a little mischeif that no one will ever see, that you intend to remove after you're done debugging. No harm, no foul. It's a quiet little rebellion that blows off a little steam...
Ever see such an item actually make it to production? Rare, but it happens. Of course, the company in question is horribly embarrassed, but it's sometimes EXTREMELY hard to find these without an extensive review of the source. And anything with a significant distributed environment and branch-merge issues makes it hard to keep a lid on such things.
Now, I don't work in the gaming industry, but I have friends who do. They're overworked and underpaid. But they work there because they enjoy working on games. They enjoy putting together the engine, the characters. And in Rockstar's case, they like being "push the envelope" edgy.
Can you imagine a couple of Rockstar developers blowing off some steam by putting some characters into...interesting physical positions late one night when they're sick of what they're assigned to work on? Do you think this is the first time someone's done this?
I'm not at all suprised someone's done this in the history of gaming. The only suprising thing is that (as far as we know) this is the first time such a thing has made it to production... There are reportedly sexually explicit single frames in some Disney cartoons, for crying out loud. "No one will ever notice it" is sometimes enough of a justification.
3 possibilities:
a.) The developers involved snuck this in as a twisted in-joke.
b.) The developers involved built this for their own amusement, and didn't mean for it to make it to prod
c.) Rockstar Games deliberatly included this in the game, looking for exactly this kind of mod to appear.
I find c.) to be the least likely of the options, personally...
That doesn't mean Rockstar's attempt to pass this off as "not our fault!" wasn't stupid. But let's be fair--do you really think this was something that was deliberatly included in the game?
Funny, Basic Instinct was R and contains shitloads more REAL nudity and sex than GTA ever could.
Why was it okay for 17+ year olds to see that, but not in GTA?
Oh, that's right... because the assholes who decide these things are complete fucking idiots.
Little do they know, joke's on them.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I heard a rumor on the internets that you can download naked pictures! Somebody cover my eyes quickly, I can't be trusted to do it myself!
...but I view this as a good thing. In all situations there has to be a extreme. We need that extreme in place so that everything else can be measured against it. Right now, for the gaming industry (and america in general), the taboo is graphic sex. The problem is that when you remove the extreme, the next thing down the line becomes the new target and new extreme. So, if they ban/outlaw graphic sex in games, then the violence becomes the next thing to go... no more gore mode.
And it also goes in the other direction. Everyone remember back in 2000-2001 when Marilyn Manson was touring in the mid-west and parents were protesting that he was corrupting the children. Then 9/11 hit and suddenly nobody gave a flying fuck about Manson, because his extreme act paled in comparison to the evil of that day.
Maybe someone needs to release a game with a hidden zombie felching mini-game. Then people wouldn't give a flying fsck about the hot coffee mod!
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
I'm assuming that the console versions of the game will require a ridiculous number of steps in order to make this content available. I assume I would have to mod my PS2, burn a new DVD, apply the patch and then finally boot the game. This could certainly take upwards of 2 days to achieve.
However, I can just jump on to any number of free porn sites on the net and in seconds be watching a real MPG video of a real asian teenager having real sex on a real bed.
Time to rate the internet AO as well then..?
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Most forms of expression are fairly linear - you read it, listen to it, or watch it all the way through once, and then you have a pretty good idea of everything that is in it. However, most video games are non-linear. There are multiple paths to the game objective, and many include features that are "locked" until after you play for hours and hours. I submit that there is no effective way to guarantee that the reviewer has excercised every code path through the game, therefore any rating is at best a guess based on incomplete information! The only people that know everything that is in a game are the people that wrote it, and probably no single one of them is familiar with the entire game either. Our best bet is to have the developer's rate the games themselves, then simply not buy from companies that misrate them. Having a 3rd party rate a videogame is really just an exercise in intellectual masterbation; the rating proves nothing because the rater knows far less about the content than the creator.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...slashbots miss the point. Rockstar didn't get busted because of the content in the game. They were busted for trying to conceal the content from the ESRB in hopes they would receive an M rating instead of an AO rating so they could sell the game in Wal-Mart. While I agree that people need to get a grip concerning sexual content in the game, slashbots need to improve their reading comprehension skills and quit using every opportunity like this to get on your soap box about how bad you think America is. What I find to be a far greater outrage is that one store can wield do much power over consumer choice. With the cost of producing video games surpassing that of most Hollywood film budgets, publishers need access to large chains like Wal-Mart for their businesses to remain profitable.
It seems a natural thing to put on my USB thumbdrive, especially if I install the Hot Coffee modified save-game on it.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The ESRB is a US entity...this is the same country that spent over a year filibustering about Janet Jackson popping out a boob at the superbowl. Americans - you can expect a whole lot more of this under your religious right controlled government.
The Content of a game is rated, not what's accessable out of the box. Technically the programmers shouldn't have left "hot coffee" in the game if they didn't want it to be found. In today's world, just about any product out on the market hiding something digital can/will be cracked eventually.
Really, RockStar did screw up if they left the minigame on the disc in any form. The only way they can save face in my eyes now is to release it, unlocked, with an AO rating. Really, these games are seriously violent enough, they should be rated AO anyway, for what ratings are worth.
The subtext to that is : ratings are only as good as a parent's control over their child. Meaning they're next to worthless.
The ESRB is an industry body, not a government regulatory agency. Participation in the ESRB is entirely voluntary.
Besides, the ratings system is just as much a selling point as anything else. A Mature rating only increases the interest in a game.
I would seriously question that any game with a Mature rating decreases by a significant amount the INTENDED audience for the game since, as you point out, it's so easy just to go online and purchase it from Amazon.
so you just comment out the call to activate it
...and then include the cheat to re-activate it.
Yes, I will be dreaming of Miami tonight.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
In a stunning move, the ESRB has advised retailers to stop selling The Sims and its expansions. This report follows public pressure over the nudity patch debacle. EA, the publishers of the game have given retailers the option of restickering the game with an M rating or exchanging it for a new version with the controversial content removed. ESRB head Patricia Vance says 'After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that sexually explicit material exists in a fully rendered, unmodified form on the final discs of the game. However, the material was programmed by EA to be inaccessible to the player and they have stated that it was never intended to be made accessible. The material can only be accessed by downloading a software patch, created by an independent third party without EA's permission, which is now freely available on the internet. Considering the existence of the undisclosed and highly pertinent content on the final discs, compounded by the broad distribution of the third party modification, the credibility and utility of the initial ESRB rating has been seriously undermined.'"
Really, does it?
How many of you played Doom when you you were kids? Or watched those NC-17 slasher flicks bad in the late 70's/early 80's?
How many of you looked at your dad's porn mags or watched the fuzzy channels at night or "aquired" vhs's of the Spice Channel from your rich friend?
And how many of you grew up to be child molesting murdering pscychopaths with people burried in your back yard? Hrmm?!
Look. Let the kids fight to get the content like the rest of us did and learn the ropes of being a kid by tricking their parents, but lets not make a national issue over something that's litterally damn harmless.
If violence and sex were harmful to children, we'd all be dead right now.
Teenage pregnancy and teen violence because of gangs and drugs is far greater problem.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Government officials, serving at the behest of an uninvolved electorate tend to listen to parents, as they seem to be a large and vocal constituency.
In other news, Social security and medicare are endorsed by politicians hoping to curry favor with senior citizens, another large and vocal constituency.
Yell at the parents, yell at the seniors, yell at the stupid stupid people who scream outrage at every stupid thing that happens in the world. Ridicule parents publicly for buying games anything like this without noticing "oh, timmy just stomped on a hookers bloody skull, that's nice", but being outraged when they see fake, very low-quality, and really stupid sexual scenes of things they can find easier and better by throwing "breasts" into google.
No government has ever taken freedoms from its citizens, we are far too eager to deliver them with ribbons attached. That parents are giving freedoms away for the rest of us is disturbing.
I seriously hate this game for its unbelievable senselessness (i believe a so-called game should have a point beyond "look i shot the nun again!"), but I can see no reason for senator clinton to be talking about this in a federal forum, at least none that fits into our constitution.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
using a specially constructed sed script, and the text of harry potter, I can turn this book into porn! It adds nothing that wasnt already there!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
In the vast majority of movies and games, the sex is all about lust, not love or creating life. If you actually bothered to play the hot coffee mod for San Andreas, you would realize how foolish you sound.
But I do agree that "our" priorities are a little screwed up (pun intended).
..I told a feminist that I think most of them are just overreacting. Oh yeah? Yeah, I can prove it to you. How? I think you'll take offense from the following statement; Feminists Have Pussies. I was right.
Which is easier:
Basically Wal-mart won't carry AO.
Senate Testimony to that effect
That is all.
n/t
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
So, how come it's still there? I can guess that, rather than being taken out like this:It may instead have been removed like this:And thus, I suspect, the compiler leaves the code in there waiting for stuff to be re-enabled. The in-game models and so forth are all still there, etc, so the stuff can just get turned on (no pun intended) for the poor children to "accidentally" see! Someone think of the children, please!
Game dev and music blog
Fuck off ESRB , the rating is for 18+s , And im sorry if you find sex offensive (even in its highly comical computerised form) ) then you really need your head checked . . ,morals and ethics and carnal-forbearance (thanks marge) are what cause problems. .
Sex is the principle Method of reproduction for our species , its important , it is a lot of fun , it is freely accessible and it is not going to disappear.
anyone over the age of 18 offended by some slight sex in a game filled with violence(which is a lot of fun) is seriously in need of some social education or mental help
I am very glad i do not live over there at this moment
Seriously , Censorship is the job of the parents not the state
ESRB you are officially a bunch of a fascist bastards
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
So, I can render images of children committing sexual acts under the guise that it is "real" and no one gives a shit. But if I poorly render two fictional adults having sex, one with their clothes on mind you, and then obsfucate it inside the code of a game where it can only be reached by applying some software tweak that you barely understand - it's a big deal.
You know what, Hillary can go fuck herself, for asking the FTC to get involved.The Media can go fuck itself for not focusing on shit that matters, but instead focusing on "the new hotness."
And parents can go fuck themselves for not paying attention to their kids, or what the real dangers are around them.
This game has already sold so many copies that undoing the "damage" is not possible. Anyone with a background in politics or a firm understanding of percentages knows that. It's all a damn pony show so that people who have no ability to make the world a better place, but alot of money, can look like they are making changes for a better future to a population of asshats too dumb to realize that fast food will kill you.
[sarcasm?]If this neuters my favorite pastime, I swear to God I will dedicate the rest of my life to writing a virus that will make the sasser worm look like a case of Chicken Pox. Its only purpose to replace desktop images with porn.[/sarcasm?]Tombraider had a skin patch like that - it was quite funny to see Lara Croft run around starkers...
Oh well, what the hell...
Generally the reaction online has been "Why are people so uptight about consentual sex instead of the gratuitous violence in the games? It's ok for Johnny to run over a prostitute, but is not ok to sleep with one consentually? WTF, mate?" That's not what is at issue here, in my mind.
The problem here was that of the voluntary disclosure and sloppy programming/publishing practices by Rockstar/Take Two. The ESRB rating system arose in the mid-90's when parents were up-in-arms about Mortal Kombat. There was the threat of legislative intervention and a mandatory rating system by the government. Game developers cried bloody murder, censorship, 1st Ammendment rights, etc. So, to head off the government from making a mandatory rating system, they implemented one of their own - what became the ESRB and the game ratings we know of today. It was all voluntary - game publishers can choose to not have their game rated, but many large stores will not sell games without a rating, which would be financial suicide. Submission was voluntary, disclosure of content was all up to the developer.
Rockstar and TakeTwo being sloppy in disclosure and programming puts the credibility of the entire volunteer, industry-lead ESRB system in jeapordy. With the current problem with GTA:SA, some politicians are calling for a government-run ratings system, using GTA:SA as evidence that the existing ESRB system does not work and is not reliable. The same arguments of censorship and 1st Ammendment protections from the mid-90's Mortal Kombat episode are returning. Regardless of your opinions of whether or not video games are art, and therefore protected speech, I don't think anyone would believe that a panel of old senators would do any better in rating video games than a panel of people who actually play them. And for this reason I believe that the ESRB did the right thing in changing the rating for GTA:SA, despite the fact that Rockstar should not be held accountable for this unofficial hack (assuming it did not come from an internal Rockstar leak). The ratings change for GTA:SA returns credibility to the ESRB rating process.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
In Canada you never bad anything based on nudity. A lot of stuff that is 18+ in the states, is 14+ here.
A "game" would be banned in Canada if it preached suicide bombing is a way to "glory" or some other shit.
They shipped the Dawn demo with their cards and it was a simple config file change for her to lose some clothes - all the *ahem* "textures" were there in photoreal quality. What if some kid bought a new graphics card to play UT2K4 - their enjoyment of mindless violence and killing could have been tainted!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The ESRB doesn't speak for all of American or all Americans
True story.
So not only those Take Two suit guys screwed and lied from the beginning, not only did they encourage modding (or at least silently blessing it) since their previous games as a way to increase their popularity (their generic EULA even encourages user-made contents), but now they are threatening all mod makers and even mod users of legal action!!!
I am completly disgust by this company.
Don't let Hillary Clinton advocate sweeping rules about technology she doesn't understand. Voice your opinion to ESRB Consumer Hotline yourself.
what a bunch of children in the USA. In Europe you can find billboards that have topless women, in the big cities. If a parent bought the game knowing there's shooting and death and etc... then what's the big deal about nudity?
In the game you deal with gangs, taking people out and stuff which is much more vulgar than polygon breasts. Plus the breasts are not part of the main game, it's a something that can't be seen without hacking. If you go to the extreme to see breasts... then surprise... you'll see some breastasists.
90% of children are caused by accident.
Oh well, what the hell...
Putting aside the bigger implications here... I find it sad that in America there is this fear of sex and all things sexual and all things that can be construed as sexual yet violence; killing, gore, more killing, glibs and whatever other disgusting video game/move/music occurance is completely allowed. My favorite is getting banned from a counter-strike server (where people go around killing over and over and over in all imaginable ways) for have what was contrued as a porn spray. Mind you, it was a woman showing her tits, nothing else. Its not just the lobbyists or the congress people who are out of control. The psychi of all of these US of A is messed up.
Fie on this action.
I would hope that all the information on the disk would be pertinent. I would be fairly shocked to find old family photos, AS/400 binaries, or (heaven forfend) Commodore 64 Basic files on a modern video game disk!
That being said, I believe the word the submitter was looking for is prurient:
prurient - adj. Inordinately interested in matters of sex; lascivious.
This brings me to my main point - why do people use a word that obviously has the wrong meaning when they could use one that is both simple and correct? For example, the submitter could have written "Considering the existence of the undisclosed adult content on the final discs..." just as easily. I would guess that the submitter either confused this word with the opposite of pertinent - impertenent (but even so, this word does not have quite the right meaning in this context) - or was trying to impress us with his superior intelligence and just got horribly off track.
In any case, don't do this anymore. It annoys people.
That is all.
Maybe someone here can explain this to me, because I just can't wrap my mind around it: Why is an ESRB "Adults Only" rating considered the kiss of death while the "M" is no big deal? Games aren't like movies--"nobody under 17 unless accompanied by an adult" a la the MPAA R rating is not a viable option. Seems to me the ratings are functionally identical, with the only difference being that 17-year-olds can buy "M" games...and 17-year-olds are probably .000000000000000000000000001% of the gaming market . It's insane to me that they would suddenly become such a battleground.
The real problem here is the ridiculous fact that the people at the top of our culture--people in their 50s and 60s who didn't grow up with videogames--are simply incapable of understanding that gaming is an adult hobby. I'd like to think that in 10 or 20 years, when the current crop of senators and editorial writers are dead or retired and Gen Xers will have taken their place, that this insanity will finally be behind us...but by then, the boomers will probably have legislatively emasculated ine industry to a degree where the changing of the demographic guard won't make any difference at all.
Look, I know righteous indignation is inevitable with a story like this, but the ESRB's actions are eminently reasonable. I can't imagine what else they could have done under the circumstances.
1) Clearly, if this scene were in the game when it was rated, it would not have gotten an M rating. Now that the situation appears to be one where Rockstar circumvented the ESRB's ratings process, the ESRB must do what they can to enforce their standards. Whatever you think of their silly standards, they are the standards they have chosen and they have to enforce them. The fact that a third party hack is involved is irrelevant as long as there is reasonable suspicion that Rockstar intentionally circumvented the ESRB.
2) Violence OK, sex bad? I think there is an internal logic to this that has nothing to do with prudishness. Look at the argument that the video game industry makes to justify violent games. "This game is a fantasy. The very extremity of the violence serves to isolate it from real world behavior. Any player with an intact moral compass will instantly distinguish fantasy violence from reality. ESRB ratings help assure that children with insufficient maturity to make this distinction do not play the game." The same argument clearly does not apply to sexuality.
Parents can be expected to instill simple and clear cut distinctions with respect to violence from a very early age. With sexuality, the distinctions are not nearly so clear cut, the age where children are exposed to them is much later, and the social consensus for acceptable behavior is much fuzzier. Hence it is quite reasonable to use a younger age threshold for violence in games than for sexuality in games.
Finally, violence is arguably fundamental to the existence of many genres of computer games. You can reasonably argue that standards which eliminate violence would destroy the industry. The same can hardly be said of sexual content.
Martin
Switzerland survived WWII by collaboration. Not exactly a role model.
I can't count the number of news stories that have run about some parenting group, lobbyiests, or politician attacking GTA for it's violence. They have hated that game from day one and have always spoke out against it. Everytime a (geek) teen commits a violent crime it is blamed on video games. Everytime a game comes out that pushes the limit on how voilent or graphic a video game can be, people get up in arms about. Video game violence is the whole reason we have the ESRB - Mortal Kombat not Leisure Suit Larry started this all.
The fact that the "Hot Coffee" incident has escalated has very little to do with sex being perceived as worse than violence. It is simply because a) no one has gone this far before in a mainstream game, and b) the perception (real or not) that Rockstar deliberately slipped this past the ESRB, knowing that it would be found eventually.
...some artist at EA put the early South Park animation of Jesus vs. Santa Claus on the build of Tiger Woods Golf PS1. Someone found it of course and it was all over the net. I'm sure he had a snicker before they escorted him out of the building.
When, exactly, did the ESRB rating have any credibility and/or utility?
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
Everybody is going nuts saying why should rockstar do this and that.
They should have taken out the content in the first place instead of just commenting it out. They were lazy and they are now paying for it
Frankly, I don't see why there is a distinction between this and a full-blown mod. There is no major difference to the user; you download it and intstall it. It could have been a whole gig of mod, and the same result could ensue. Also, with all this partisan name-throwing going around, stop blaming any party. Seriously, they both have had GTA and videogames in general in thier crosshairs for a while. The only difference is that the Republicans call it a sin.
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
You just make patches for the games to get them in trouble with the ESRB. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess if you don't like Microsoft you just write a patch to halo 2 to add a sex mini game.
Looks like the ESRB caught the 'FCC holier than thou' disease.
I hear life is sexually transmitted...
If this was a simple easter egg that involved going into an unmarket house or talking to some random hooker in the middle of nowhere, I could see the problem. But if you have to go to the internet, download a piece of code, install it and then play the game, you're way outside just playing the game. Anyone who can do these things could more easily find animal porn if it weren't for the media and legislators bringing so much attention to it and making sure it's being mirrored everywhere.
Add in the fact that this is a M rated game with the name of a particular criminal act in the title. Any kid who is playing this game obviously has parents that either don't care and/or aren't the least bit involved.
Really though, it's not so much the sex that moral conservatives are railing against. The same thing happened when the game came out in the first place. Eventually people stopped caring and everything died down. This is just another way to get the media to provide some more exposure.
Remember the 2004 list of the top 10 most violent games? Three involved saving humanity from being massacred by aliens or demons. Two didn't come out until 2005. Three were crapfests that would've barely sold any copies except for the media exposure for being so violent. One was never even planned for release in north america. The most commonly cited one is named for a felony crime.
When Sonic and Mario get together for a drive-by or gang-banging some hos, let me know. In the meantime, Hillary and the rest of her group need to get back to doing their jobs in the senate.
Wasn't there a part of the game God of War for PS2 that lets you jump into bed with two topless women and "interact"? And as far as I remember, it wasn't a hidden part of the game. Where was all the crazy controversy and ESRB-ness then?
It takes a mod to activate it not a cheat. STFU if you don't know what you are talking about.
Sure people are still having sex, but that doesn't mean that you have to put some pixels together and show it to the whole world. My theory is that those who lack sex put them into games so they can be happy about it. How sad is that?
Having seen the video for the Hot Coffee Mod and using the no-blur code on The Sims 2 I call bullshit. Sure, you get to see Sims take a shower or bath, but they have no, what's the polite term... "naughty bits" to see. You get half a point because the Hot Coffee mod has no nudity (at least the video I saw didn't have any). But more sex?
Have you even played Sims 2? I'm thinking you haven't. If you had you'd know that the sex all happens hidden under blankets, under water, or behind the dressing room curtains. And what little that is actually animated is more appropriately described as "tickle fight".
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Before this exploit came out, I didn't want anything to do with GTA, seeing as I sucked at the first one. When I heard there was an exploit, I just shrugged, after all, you can see CGI boobies by patching Tomb Raider and lots of other games. But as soon as I saw that the ESRB encouraged stores to pull it off the shelves I said to myself "What kind of boobies *are* these?! Gold-studded? Hallucinogen-dripping? Adhesive?" Now I *have* to see them!
Visit this weblink, friend, to dutifully apprise the ESRB of your "Complaint or Comment" about their appaling conduct on this matter. Or of course you could simply inform them that they SUCK ASS. ("SUCK ASS" inquiries would probably be best described as "Other" for question #1.)
The Slashdot group-think may doubt me, but here's what I think:
Though I believe that it is the parent's job, not the game industry, to police what thier kids do and do not play, I have no sympathy for Rockstar on the basis of how they handled the matter.
First they denied the content existed at all. Then they said it did exist, but was not developed by them (rather the modder inject it all into the game). And finally, they admitted that it was created in-house, but that it would be corrected. Just plain stupid. Though there still would of been controversy over the issue, it would of not of been nearly as prolonged if they had just cut to the chase, admitted that it was thier creation and said that they would take actions necessary to remedy the situaion. This is Responsible Buisness 101.
Now all they'll get for it is increased scrutiny for all thier future titles and credit for helping undermine the industry in general, in the face of increased support for government intervention in the regulation of graphic game content.
NOTE: I agree with the Penny Arcade all the way on the point that the ESRB really should put the AO rating more to work. If a title is meant for adults (either by violence, nudity or both), rate it as that. They do nothing for thier credibility when they allow GTA to enter the market with an M rating in spite of it's incredibility violent nature, only to add the AO rating later because 'there was a flash of sex'.
then why have it on the disc in the first place? Did Rockstar really think no-one would notice it, and wouldn't get into possible trouble?
It's one thing to make such a violent game. Yes, I play them and support free speech, etc., but you(the game developer and publisher) need to be as honest as possible to any government requirements such as ratings. Hiding things only makes for more trouble for everyone. I don't think Rockstar has any right to bitch about their situation.
Of how politicians are completely ignorant to not just technology, but morality and a great deal other things. Just because her husband was getting his nob polished in the oval office by a chubby intern (pun intended) doesn't mean that sex in a game is a big deal. Seriously, how can it be worse than all the violence that was in there? Is she retarded? Guess I have to vote third party again next election, thanks alot democrats for ruining the two party system by not providing even a reasonable alternative to the corporate shill party.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
If they're going to do that, they should ship a version with the "Hot Coffee" mod enabled. And, since the sex action is more boring than the rest of the game, maybe improve it a little. Let the market decide.
I bet she just doesn't want kids to turn out into copies of Billy boy and become sex craving lunatics. Maybe if he had killed someone she would be going after the violence in the game.
http://clinton.senate.gov/contact/
Here is a overly simplified, but rather useful demonstration of what is now called "The Nipple Pixel Effect" Please examine the images below carefully!
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This is a (highly magnified) default pixel:
The pixel is devoid of content, ready to receive nuance and meaning. As many Slashdot regulars know, the scientific name for this state is "boring".
This is a (highly magnified) weapon pixel:
Note that the pixel is now filled with violent energies. Careful examination of this pixel shows its propensity to do damage to peace-loving liberal agendas. The scientific name for a pixel in this state is "fun".
This is a (highly magnified) nipple pixel:
This pixel is heaving with throbbing unquenced sexual desire. Take the time to examine this pixel more closely and you will notice how it seems to be renlentless thrusting at your closed, but oh so moist mind with expansive heat which melts conservative agendas. The scientific name for a pixel in this state is "more fun" to male computer scientists and "yeah, whatever" to female computer scientists.
Now, if we examine the firm, yet silky nipple pixel, gently take it between our fingers, so to speak, we can see that the pixel is actually composed of discreet... OH MY GOD ITS ZOMBIE STROM THURMOND AND HIS NEO-CONSORVATORS OF MORAL DISCIPLINE. HELP! THEY'VE MADE IT THROUGH MY FRONT DOOR. ACK! RICK SANTORUM'S SECRET TWO-HEADED FETUS-MONSTER IS CHEWING ON MY CABLE MODEM. AGH! I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER I CAN HOLD OUT. ECK! BILL FRIST JUST DISECTED MY CAT! OH THE HUMANITY! PLEASE TELL MY WIFE I LOVE HER VERY M...
I'm not sure I understand. From TFA: What exactly is so bad about this? It has a different rating. So what? The ESRB is doing their job. From the ESRB website What all of that means is that the ratings assigned by the ESRB are intended to be used as a guide, such that the consumer has a general idea of what to expect. Parents that are using these ratings in place of discretion appropriate for the individual child are taking a general recommendation and treating it like the gospel.
Additionally, the ESRB is not in the business of modifying games. Their job is not to find content that is not accessible through game play. The argument that the content is accessible through game play is nonsense. A patch was required in order to access the scene in question. For the ESRB to apply unofficial patches to a game at any point during testing would be completely unethical. It is doubtful that anyone on the ratings board sees code regularly as part of their job; there is simply no need.
The purpose of the ESRB is to evaluate a game for content and issue a rating to inform parents of what to expect. With what was known at the time, this is exactly what they did. Take careful note: in light of new content discovered in this game, the ESRB has changed its rating. This is not arbitrary; ratings are determined based on the material in a game, and this game now meets the criteria for an AO rating.
Furthermore, the magnitude of this issue the result of little more than Hillary Clinton's political campaign. Were this a truly important concern to the former first lady, this type of video game modification would have been under fire years ago. The patch for The Sims that caused all of the characters to walk around completely naked has long since been forgotten.
This display of political impropriety is clearly an attempt to insert Senator Clinton into the limelight to gain press attention in preparation for a presidential election, at the expense of the public perception of the ESRB's integrity. In spite of Clinton's disingenuous actions and the difficult situation they have created, the ESRB has handled the matter exceptionally well.
I wonder if Rockstar will release a modified AO version with the sex included in the game with no modification necessary, since the cat is out of the bag at this point.
What idiot moderated this a troll , obviously the parent used strong language in anger over the censorship so you mod it troll. .As adults we are also free to enjoy sex .
Strong language is justified in this context , Censorship is pathetic especially censoring things for adults.
I intend this swear word entirely ironically "FUCK"
Censor me all you must , but We are free to speak our minds and speak how we will
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Well, you lot did chase the Puritans out of England.
Thanks. Thanks a heap. We're better for it. Really.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
you're making the assumption that the child will download the patch himself.
given the popularity of GTA, i think it's much more likely that a patch allowing porngraphy in the game would get passed around the schoolyard rather than downloaded individually by each child. that doesn't require any technical expertise at all. in a child's world, there's more than one way to distribute software.
Woohoo!
So while Bill cheated on her with an intern during his presidency, she can support him? but a downloaded software mod for a video game unlocking similar acts is now no good? what gives hillary?
Bush and the right will hop into the fray when people discover the mods that allow CJ to have gay sex with Big Smoke and Caesar. . .
...will development shops bother to spend 10's of thousands to get ESRB-17 rating instead of an 18? In this case, I'm willing to bet that the lawyers came back and said: "can you take this out?" so the devs diked it. If the devs had said "Yes, but it'll set us back a month to completely expunge it and test the changes" I'm pretty sure the answer would have been (quite correctly IMO) "OK ship it as is."
Personally, I think Rockstar et al could make some mileage from "The game so hot Walmart won't touch it!" Do you really think that the target market is going to say "Boy, ESRB gives this game an R rating and the Christian bookstore refuses to carry it...too hot for me!"
It's certainly possible Rockstar planned this, and thier media statements have not been exactly forthright, but the argument that this somehow makes the game racier than it was before is bullshit, and, more importantly, any argument based on the idea that this is somehow dangerous to children, or that it exposes them to pornography, is an outright lie.
No I'm pretty sure you're not, given the fact that there are 300 posts above you saying the same thing, just worded slightly differently...
All in all, it's been a stimulating discussion.
Dude, we get worse on 9pm on standard cable.
Showcase and shows like The Hitchiker fucking got me through puberty.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Post.
Ever.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
you realize of course that because this game is being "revoked" or whatever you want to call, lots of people, particularly in the target audience segment, who hadn't previously purchased it but were planning on buying it later or whatever are now much more likely to buy it.. This is exactly the kind of publicity the GTA series has thrived on. Granted the execs may not like it, but I'd be willing to bet that sales of the game will get a second spurt now as people quickly grab one for posterity/ while they can / etc.. I wasn't sure if I was going to buy the game as i was in the middle of several others, now I'll prob go pick it up asap before they change it or stop selling it... even if i cant enable the mod, to gamers its somewhat going to be a collectors item..
:-) I only bring it up because i think that it speaks to the stupidity of those who complain about censorship in both video games and even on TV. We have no problem with depictions of actions that are felonies, but god forbid they show some legal "adult" activity and magically people have a problem with it.. Makes me really wonder about people, i find it odd they'd rather expose their children to violence then to nudity, but i guess this is a pretty deep rooted thing in society
on a second note, does anyone else think it's somewhat ironic that the depiction of acts which are legal in real life, such as nudity, sex, tits.., are always what gets a game censor'd or drives up the rating. Where as there never seems to be a problem with a game that depicts illicit and illegal activity.. semi kidding, but look at mortal kombat; you've got assault, battery, murder, manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon, etc.. or need for speed; speeding, reckless driving, reckless endangerment, use of non-street legal cars (yes i know im being picky, but a majority of nissan skyline gt-r's are not street legal in the US by simply importing them from japan...) and then of course is the depiction, use of, and sale of drugs in video games.. Don't get me wrong I don't have a problem with any of it. I have no complaints at all, and i cant stand people who claim "games are too violent" if they are too violent for you then don't buy them, its that simple.. I could say that I find country music offensive because its too hokey and lacks anything bearing a remote resemblance to a catchy tune, but if i said that i guarentee you i'd piss plenty of people off, and id bet if the government did something to censor "crappy" music somebody would likely end up getting shot
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
"In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact."
--Marlene Dietrich
Its not only sex in video games, I saw a NIPPLE on the TV!!
the CHILDREN are DOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!
Starsucks
...Is that the game is already rated for persons over 17. At the same age, in the US, you can get into the most restricted movies (NC-17) which have much racier content than seen in the Hot Coffee mod. At 18 you can buy hardcore pornography in the US. Of course, on the internet, you can get anything you want, for free, as soon as you're old enough to use a browser.
Worse, many of the people complaining about the sexual content of this game would not bat an eyelash at letting their kids shoot-off real guns with them, or watch violent television programs like Walker, Texas Ranger. Certainly, there are some positive messages in shows like Walker, but the overwhelming message of "might equals right" isn't really that healthy. But no backlash. We see 1/3 second of Janet Jackson's nipple and the reaction is... You would think she had slaughtered a baby seal on the 50-yad line. But she probably would have gotten less bad publicity if she HAD killed the seal.
Who did what now?
Objectively, if you're giving a company a choice to flush a huge portion of its future sales down the toilet by relegating its product to a handful of resellers or to alter the content, you are effectively censoring the product. The company is actually censoring the product, but this is only occurring because of your own actions. For all practical purposes, you are censoring the product.
When you are out in the wilderness claiming your Manifest Destiny your priorities become skewed when compared to city life. Kill a man or beat him 'til he's disfigured; nobody's around for miles and miles, nobody cares, the fact that he'll have to live near you only means that now you have the local power. Have unwed sex, and have an unplanned child out of wedlock; nobody's around for miles and miles, all of a sudden, the woman you impregnated can no longer work at 100% AND you have another mouth (that won't be able to contribute for several harsh seasons) to feed with your community's already limited resources.
Considering the US society has only recently stopped it's frontier expansion the whole Violence vs. Sex issue is pretty obvious. In Europe where another child is easily supported by dense urban community its no wonder why Sex is more acceptable.
---k--
</stupid>
...underage sex was not a crime worse than murder.
I agree with the points made in the parent.
In its unmodified state, you could not access the content. You must then violate the games EULA to apply the 3rd party patch.
Makes me wonder what Rockstar games will do in retaliation - will the makers of the patch get sued for lost revenue?
The kind of advertising that could bring an end to the voluntary rating system and distribution of M rated games through mass market retailers like WalMart.
Chess is a game. Checkers is a game.
Scrabble is a game. Chutes and Ladders is a game. Poker is a game.
Connect Four is a game.
Pac-Man is a game. Donkey Kong is a game. Mario Brothers is a game.
I think when older people hear the word game, that is what they think of. They have never played video games, they missed the whole progression to realism, 100+ hours of play to finish, interactive environments, etc. They recall days of pinochle and checkes with grandpa when they were a kid. Kids play games. Only kids play games. Parents play games with their kids. They are innocent, they are fun.
So to suddenly hear that there is a sex depiction in a GAME brings horror thoughts that 8 year olds are smoking cigars and drinking beer while playing poker with nudie playing cards.
TV shows can have sex and violence because it is TV. Movies have sex and violence too but it's ok because it's "just a movie." But a "game", something that in my opinion is far superior in terms of entertainmant value than the other two, cannot for some reason have sex without the USA going crazy. But it can have violence. (There's a value issue there that has already drenched in horse blood.) Games also have ratings, just like movies, but for some reason parents and legislators continue to ignore that fact.
So if we said, "The new digital interactive simulation from Rockstar North has sex in it," it sounds different no? Compare with, "The new game from Rockstar North has sex in it." Game?!?! Holy Jesus, my KIDS play GAMES! Somebody has to do something! This is an outrage!
Let's face it, this is a whole new level and form of entertainment. It needs to get a new name. This is not checkers, this is not chess, this is not 2D mario brothers. It's better than all 3 put together times a plot from a movie times the graphics of a tv show. Any suggestions?
Children are banned, having been found to be a result of pornography.
I would guess that there is currently a sales spike for the game. Rockstar is brilliant, and also evil. If they put in an explicit mini-game then they intended for somebody to activate it. If they didn't intend that to happen why is it on the disc? By accident? Riiiiiight...
Rockstar is laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile they've screwed with a decent ratings system and messed things up for other publishers in the long run.
Lasers Controlled Games!
As far as I'm concerned, this is like changing the rating of The Sims because of the nude (no blur) hack. And for the people that way, "Well, Rockstar put the sex scene in..." I say, "Maxis put boobies in." Same thing. Another way I look at it is this... So what if Rockstar put the sex scene in? They designed the game so that no one would ever see it. The only reason that we have seen it is that someone wrote a hack that exposed it to us. Blaming Rockstar for this is like blaming a woman for exposing herself if a pervert runs by and lifts up her shirt. The only way that I can see blaming this on Rockstar is if we find out that they put the code there for the explicit purpose of being exploited and/or if they leaked the hack themselves.
Your analogy is misleading. The offending scenes in GTA:SA parallel the SIMs in the context that they both have modifications to remove previously-censored scenes, but that's where the comparisons end.
In the case of GTA, the developers (though thier creation of the scenes) demostrated a clear intent to create a tasteless scene. As such, the nature of the sex in GTA:SA plays out with no doubt as to what was its purpose. Racy, cheap and dirty (with perhaps a twisted sense of humor and awkwardness included also). The SIMs does not exhibit signs of that, where in thier case, the crudeness was the product of the modder.
I never had much admiration or respect for the ESRB to start with, but any respect I DID have is gone now.
The game, as it was sent to stores, did not have any sexually explicit content that was accessible to the player. That is the ONLY thing the ESRB should be rating: what the audience will see in the game, as it is out of the box.
It took an unauthorized alteration by an individual completely unassociated with Rockstar to make that content accessible.
Homeworld had texture and some data files for Ripley's lifeboat, the Narcissus; however, it was in no way accessible to a player without digging into the game files in ways Relic never intended. Should 20th Century Fox now have grounds to sue them for copyright infringement of the Alien movie?
I know of plenty of games where there was likely VERY objectionable content left, locked away, on the disc.
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind had explicit text depictions of public elf-on-cat man sex left in the game files, but it took a mod to restore it to the corresponding book. Should it be AO for bestiality and hardcore erotica content? Nah. (that mod, "The Real Barenziah", is availible at www.rpgplanet.com/morrowind)
Sims and Sims 2 has nipples on the female textures (the only thing they omit in the default textures is genitlia and pubic hair) and a command line option that can disable the censor blur. Should it be AO for nudity? Should it be BANNED as pedophilia, since you can watch naked children voyueristicly? Of course not.
Max Payne 2 had a (truly beautiful) nude Mona Sax texture set that probably was used for when he walks in on her in the shower. Remedy framed the shot so that you only saw her from the shoulders up, but they painted the whole skin, and it's (relatively) easily accessible through the built in developer mode. Between that and the pretty steamy scene where Max nearly has her shirt off, should Max Payne be AO? Eh... maybe. Probably not.
The ESRB doesn't have any grounds or any responsibility for rating the game as it exists after a third party alters it in any way whatsoever. They've done more to hurt their credibility by caving to hardcore conservative bitching groups (I'm spitting in your direction, Parents Television Council and the rest of you foaming-at-the-mouth censor-happy fascist) than this media hissy-fit ever could have.
Paul Eibler really said it best in the article. "The ESRB's decision to re-rate a game based on an unauthorized third party modification presents a new challenge for parents, the interactive entertainment industry and anyone who distributes or consumes digital content."
As in, "How the fuck are we supposed to make any games at all now? Now we're accountable for any whackjob that comes along and screws with our game. We make a Barney game, some sick fuck makes a patch that moves the verticies on Barney's model to give him a giant cock, and we get sued?!"
Shame on you ESRB.
And the hypocrisy behind this makes my eye twitch. We're dominated by a patholigcally fucked up puritanical mindset.
Gang warfare, organized crime, prostitution, killing prostitutes, slaughtering bystanders, breaking traffic and weapons laws, killing police officers, and generally being a complete sociopath: OK.
A low-detail fascimile of human copulation, a normal part of human life which we all started from: BANNED.
Funny, Hillary threatens to go to the FTC. Then, Rockstar's GTA:SA gets moved to adults only rating in less than a week, diffusing a possible government showdown before it happens. Thus, Rockstar averts costly trial and additional bad media exposure.
Does anyone else think ESRB and Rockstar have a better than average relationship these days?
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
Oh please, if nudity was nearly as damaging as violence (not that simulated either would do anything to a mature, well adjusted individual) Rockstar would have jumped on that bandwagon and we'd all be playing Grand Theft Porno. Rockstar?
If it's getting passed around the school yard, that means way too many young children are playing a game intended for people 17+ that they shouldn't have had in the first place.
It just stuns me how ultra-violent movies can merit innocuous ratings while a pubic hair immediately warrants restriction. This game is a case in point. Brutal killing and mayhem is OK... but unlocked porn? NOW you've crossed the line! Huh? Does that make any sense? I've never understood this evaluation of violence versus sexuality.
And this one's not even hidden in the code.
God of War, developed by a wholly owned subsidary of Sony Entertainment, contains pretty blatant nudity right off the bat in the game.
Better yet, it includes a mini-game right at the start whereby you jump in bed and have sex with a woman, earning more powerups (not played the game, imagine it's health) the better you "do it."
No codes, no modifications, nothing. It's right there, plain as day.
Game has an M rating too.
So what the fuck has Hillary got her panties stuffed a mile up her ass for over GTA? Cause she's an ignorant, stupid bitch who is being entirely too attentive to a disabled sex game being present in a bloody, violent game featuring rampant drug references and crime?!
I went to the local Wal-Mart as soon as I saw this story. I tried to buy the PC version and the X-Box version. Both came up as "Sale not allowed." Still on the shelves, but the computers won't let you buy them. When I left, the salespeople started taking the games off the shelves.
Called Gamestop, which was already closed, but they said the game was unavailable for purchase due to the recall as well.
With networked major retail stores, there goes the only good part about living in a rural area. They talk too quickly. I bet I could have purchased the game just a few hours ago.
How the hell is that fully rendered? I saw polygons missing, and dude didn't even have a dick showing anywhere.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"the credibility and utility of the initial ESRB rating has been seriously undermined." more like the credibility of ESRB has been seriously undermined. of course, if parents actually raised their kids, and didn't let Rockstar do it, this would all be a moot point.
It's a fan fiction. No pictures. Amusing for anyone who has a sense of humor.
http://daisygrrl.com/quidditch/
Please see the ESRB ratings definitions.
First off, the SIMS has a rating of Teen. Not Everyone/Teen. No such rating exists. You can see the gamespot Sims site for confirmation of the rating: Gamespot SIMS info
The SIMS, under normal conditions, does not display nudity. If it did, it would likely have received an M rating, although the inclusion of this one "offensive" item may not have been enough to move it into that category.
The SIMS merely displays naked people when hacked. GTA: SA depicts an actual sex act. This, under the guidelines, clearly would put GTA: SA in the AO category, especially when coupled with the violence already depicted in the game.
The matter is further inflamed by the fact GTA is a game that legislators would just as soon rather had never been created in the first place, already having spawned talk of banning the game due to violence, criminal acts, and general disdain for the law. (though that didn't get far).
I'm sure a similar uproar would have occurred if there were an actual sex act explictly displayed in the SIMS, or if a sex act were "unlockable", even through a hack such as the one in GTA: SA.
I don't necessarily disagree with you that rating of the SIMS, and its sequels and expansion packs might be changed - but it seems unlikely. Even if it did, Walmart and other mainstream stores would still sell the games anyway, as they'd only have M ratings.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
When did America lose its mind?
November 2, 2004.
"Uh oh. Everybody freak out, animated sex is coming."
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
children have been banned as they can only result from sex.
hit her up, too...
http://clinton.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm
[move
Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sergeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.
"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"
I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I'm writing because Rockstar Games North is at the center of the future. The Hot Coffee Mod has propelled you to the front lines of the culture wars. For many hundreds of years, crafty and selfish politicians have used the empty and meaningless phrase "family values" to enrage an otherwise apathetic public and solidify their power.
The most recent self-aggrandizing political power-monger to attempt a power grab by denigrating the invented enemies of children and the family is Hillary Clinton. How hypocritical for a woman whose own family life is a public embarrassment to now attack a supposed enemy of the family. But of course it's no coincidence - it is precisely because her own family life is a joke that she must become a defender of the family. For what better way to advance her political career?
You have a choice. Rockstar Games North has created the most aesthetically important piece of art since Andy Warhol was alive. Never in the history of the narrative form has a piece encouraged with such audacity the audience's identification with an anti-social character. And yet, it's a hit. Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular video game series of all time. The question people should be asking is why do so many people dream of being an outlaw in their personal life rather than what effect this piece of art is having on our children.
Then again, the outlaw has been a staple of the narrative form ever since the inception of the story. Men have always thrilled to tales of the criminal, the social deviant, and the outlaw. Obviously, part of the attacks on Grand Theft Auto are spurred by an anti-technological bias. It's likely that many who criticize have never even played a video game. It's even more likely that those who criticize have never played through a single game of Grand Theft Auto.
Many criticisms are based on single, isolated elements of the game, and yet where's the criticism of the game as a whole? Criticizing GTA for a single element is like criticizing Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye for a single word.
The suggestion that Grand Theft Auto could somehow harm children is laughable. How is it possible for a video game to nullify the effects of poverty, racial discrimination, lack of opportunity, and - most importantly - the natural slights children experience as a result of interacting with other children? It's not possible. And for someone to suggest that a video game has a greater influence than any of these effects, combined or individually, on the personality of a growing child, is ridiculous. Your company is being attacked and demonized by individuals and organizations concerned only with increasing their own power. Clinton's and other groups' intentions are naked, obvious, and reprehensible.
How many of us experienced violent content in art while growing up? How many of us experienced sexual content while growing up? Almost all of us. The Bible itself is full of violence and sex. Yet most of us are law-abiding citizens. In fact, I believe if the GTA audience were researched, we'd find that they are less likely to commit a crime than the general population. How likely is someone to be a criminal when they have the tenacity to make it through a 40+ hour narrative? How likely are they to be a criminal if imaginary anti-social acts satisfy them?
You need to break yourselves off from Take Two and fight the good fight. You're established now. GTA will always sell. You can make other games that push the boundaries of the art form. And, if you follow this road, you'll have no competition. Almost all other companies will be cowed and scared.
Good luck. I hope you decide to fight.
I expect that Walmart might drop the game, since they try for the family friendly image. However, the game is pretty much a guaranteed seller, and Walmart will put the bottom line before all else.
But really, can any of you think of anyone who will suddenly decide not to purchase this game when they otherwise might have?
END COMMUNICATION
This is no tub girl (GIS tubgirl, very NSFW or probably anywhere, don't look at it, it will burn your eyes). I saw that for the first time when I was about 15 and if you can download and apply a game mod you can definitely find some nasty shit on the internet, including enough good porno to last a lifetime. Why bother with a game mod when you can get some steamy hardcore porn instead?
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
We do not carry software rated adults only (as rated by the ESRB).
We don't have Wal-mart in Australia. I always thought it was a department store (like the similarly named K-Mart, which we do have), and sold things for adults. Is it a toy store?
I wanna thank Rockstar for being up front about this in the first place. Way to throw fuel on the fucking fire, smacktards.
No sig for you!!
Banning has been banned as this has led to the extinction of human race.
It's all about the media (blogs, game sites) coverage. Nobody would give a damn about this easter-egg - thats what it is - if there wouldn't be that interest in the media.
I mean, I'd never patch my GTA to have the scene unlocked, because it would be to much hassle for a CGI rendered (what is it?) blow-job scene? Just enter an accordant string in Google and you'd find much harder pictures/movies.
The fact that Senator Clinton is that interested in incident is funny enough.
I think, it's a well-planned PR trick from Rockstar Games.
I'm tired of it crashing on me after 30 min of play. So maybe now they'll finally patch the damn game! And all it took was a much publicized sex scene scandal a call for action from some US senators...
I don't care what you say. No matter if the game's rated "NO" for "NObody can play it," your kids are probably going to have a friend "Timmy" whose parents bought it for him. Your kids will go over to Timmy's house and play SA there, plus or minus Hot Coffee mod. It's still your responsibility to know what your kids are up to, which is MORE than just whether or not you're going to buy them some game based on a rating.
(.)(.)
Run away! My eyes, aaaahhh!
Microsoft's Notepad has been given an AO rating due to its ability to create "vivid, sexually explicit" ASCII porn
There are a couple different things that can happen.
The retailers got the games from a distributor, and they probably would have had a return clause just as they do with most DVDs, books, etc. That means that things that don't sell after X weeks can be sent back for full credit. They should be able to use that clause to send the games back.
So the unsold games will go back to the distributors, who will either send them back to Rockstar or Rockstar's distributor, or the games will be resold to a store that will keep carrying the game -anyone know of a retailer who IS going to keep selling it? I need to buy a copy.
Of course, Walmart and the others have the option to bypass the distributors and resell the games direct to other retailers if they so desire.
Or they can set up a shell company and dump the unsold games on eBay for more than they could have gotten at retail.
Sig for hire.
Up until, obviously, the Hot Coffee patch, modders have pretty much had free reign in making additions and enhancements to games (including one going on to make a business out of a heavily modded game).
Since there is a lot of hidden features in many games (such as the DOA and Sims nude patches have shown), and the only way the ESRB could hope to catch them all is to literally pick apart the games before giving their ratings, the obvious fallout would be to crack down on the mod community, lest the game industry come under further scrutiny.
Jeeze, and we thought the gaming industry was in trouble when Activision first released Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
The Credibility of the ESRB has indeed been undermined. They've gone from "protecting minors from bad content" to the need to call for a Waaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance every time someone gripes about a wee bit of nudity.
News Flash: WE'RE NAKED! WE DO THE HORIZONTAL MAMBO! IT'S NATURE! Holy crap! How hard is this to understand? Nudity isn't indecent, it's our natural state of existance.
Now, you tell me: What teenage kid _hasn't_ stolen his dad's copy of Hustler at least once? Why aren't those dads in jail/being persecuted for undermining the "moral fiber" of society? Because it's asinine. And this debaucle is asinine.
Kids without a firm grasp of what is and isn't reality should honestly not play this game. That's a given. But you can't keep your kids "innocent" forever, and censoring a game isn't going to help that ideal along, either. Teenagers are going to learn about, and constantly think about, sex. That's life, that's growing up, that's part of BEING HUMAN. Let the kids have their fun.
Hell, they're probably fornicating right under their parents' noses, anyway...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
i know ill probly get trolled for this (partly because i said that), but that was informative and only at the end of it had any trace of trollish behaviour, and that wasnt directed at someone, merely what they said, so why the evilness?
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. - HHGTTG
...publicity stunt .. buy an old copy (with all the content still available) while it's still on the stores... that's what they had on their minds since the beguining... Why did they produce that content in the first place? They don't give a damn about the rating because that game is focused in the adult buyer either way...
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
w00t...yet another reason to download games...say i wanna buy the game, but it's not at wal-mart, or any other store because the esrb were a bunch of dicks...where do i get it? T3H INT4rW3B!!11111199114234241!@#$#!$14231!twelve! maybe i should release my women's nudity/sex with golf clubs patch for tiger woods 2005...
?giS
No Sex Please we're American
'the credibility and utility of the initial ESRB rating has been seriously undermined.'"
I don't really see how. They rating they had given it deemed the content inappropriate for anybody under 17. The mod doesn't really add anything that wouldn't make it into an R-rated movie, which are also deemed inappropriate for those under 17. Thus the rating was still spot-on.
The problem is that parents don't know what the ESRB ratings really mean (and that at times they can be inconsistant...I've seen some definite bad calls between the T and M ratings). The ESRB gave GTA:SA, along with every other GTA game, the highest rating that is generally given to games.
To me, it would have give the ESRB more credibility to leave the rating on GTA:SA an M. Perhaps it would finally convince the parents of the US that, much like movies the MPAA rates as R-rated, M-rated games are not appropriate for younger kids. Period. Any attempt to keep M-rated games more "familiy-friendly" just waters down the rating system further.
Had they defended the M-rating, they could have established M, rather than AO, as the cutoff where games are likely to be unsuitable for younger kids. Instead they caved, creating even more confusion as to what exactly an M rating means.
Ok so a game has sex in it now. The Ratings board said hmmm... Sex might deserve an 18+ rating. The Movie industry made this move decades ago. This isn't censorship, this isn't legal action. This is reclassification! If anything this is a victory. If number munchers had an ultragore mode accessable via cheat codes, I would say it would need to be reclassified.
They have a perfectly good feedback form:
http://www.esrb.org/consumer_online_hotline.asp
I bet no one has. So they'll do it again with the next game.
I'd prefer an actual citation of the law rather than a random website.
Is that why the whole FA was about how Take Two's profits are going to go down in the next quarter? I think the point is that Walmart or whatever crazy mega-supermarkets you have in the US won't stock a title rated 18+ with "prolonged strong sexual content" (but of course, a 17+ title with just "strong sexual content" is fine...).
"detracted from the creative merits of this award winning product" - TFA
Yeah, because statistics prove that 99.9% of American mothers prefer mindless ultra-voilence and crime sprees to poorly realised, blocky sexual content which is not really even pornographic.
I'm all for voilence, but the words "creative merits" and "san andreas" do not deserve to be in the same sentence. They took their GTA series, which has been a train-wreck sold only through controversy since the original GTA (the only good version, in my opinion) and slapped a few poorly realised RPG-like features into it and those goddamn irritating DDR-like missions.
San Andreas got rave reviews (99.9% of reviewers are morons who will lap anything up as long as it is called "Halo" or "GTA"), sold like hot cakes, and got stolen en-masse from GAME stores but it's just the same old game repacked and regurgitated.. buying the original GTA every time a new GTA is released is a smarter idea. How I long for the days when the word "original" could be used to describe a game without an acompanying din of laughter.
Conclusion: Sex and voilence is a great way to sell crap to the masses, and people favour marketing-hyped crap to original ideas. But we knew that already, right?
Gadgetoid.com - Gadgets & Games Journalism
Out of curiosity, an M rating is supposed to be for people over 17. If you are allowed to have consentual sex over the age of 16 what the heck is wrong with the M rating? Someting you are allowed to do in real life is ok (although seemingly heavily discouraged) but viewing an animation of it isn't?!? It must be a screwed up system indeed that is more concerned with increasing the rating for something that is legal than for something illegal like killing people, beating up hookers, stealing cars etc
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
You US people should count your selves lucky that ESRB ratings are just guidance ratings. Here in the UK we have a rating system the BBFC but the difference is it's law and GTA:SA is a 18 so this means not persons under 18 can buy the game.
By downloading a third party patch called BitTorrent, you can use Windows to watch all the porn you want!
Label it 18+ or exchange it for Dos 6.2!
If it sounds stupid, looks stupid, then don't be suprised to learn.. it's stupid. If you can download HotCoffee, then, suprise suprise, you can probably find all the porn you want, without Rockstar's badly animated help.
I say game modders go after ESRB. Start modding E rated games to contain the hardest core porn known to exist (with midgets, goats, and santorum flying)!
I8-D
I remember a nice little patch for the Sims that made the little char's naked and removed the blurred out parts when you showered and used the toilet. Maybe they should consider changing the rating of that one? How many others out there..... What about Tomb Raider and it's 'patch' for Lara?
C'mon - if the content was in there do you guys really think that it was never meant to be unleashed? After hearing how EA and other game developers wield figurative whips over the game developers and incessant crunch time - when exactly did the bored coders and multimedia people (who would have had to collude incidentally) find the time to put this hack in?
Ab-so-friggin-lutely brilliant marketing. No way in hell they could ever flaunt this on purpose so they make it an "accident".
Can't they just keep selling the games and ignore the ESRB's request? I thought the ESRB system was voluntary, and has no force of law...
Or am I mistaken?
What I'd like to see is Rockstar pulling out all the stops - reworking the game to include TONS of sexual content that makes it truly deserve the AO rating. GTA is in a unique position where it's been made famous because of all of the violence and controversy. More controversy means more people buying out of curiousity.
If the game was designed to be exactly what the developers intended without restrictions on content, we might get the best GTA game yet. I'd love to see this censorship plot backfire in a big way.
http://www.pornstar3d.com/home.htm
It still stands... if someone can twiddle a bit they can turn GTA into AO. If someone twiddles a bit and turns on nudity in the SIMS then it should have a rating adjustment.
Well if you ask me, the ESRB just shot itself in the foot. They fell to political pressures to change the rating, causing the game to be pulled from many of the big chains, possably making the game nearly impossable to pick up in any realistic retail store in the near future but, that's besides the point.
The real problem is this, the ESRB's actions make it look like they screwed up, which makes it look like the system is broken, which means that now the Goverment may push it's way back into the idea of regulating the gaming industry for allowing this to happen, which really means things are about to go into a serious downward spiral.
I know it sounds a little redicioulus but the ESRB should have held it's ground at this point and put forward a point of view somewhat simular to this. "The content was not an intentional part of the product put forward. The modifications broke what the designers intended to be put forward THUS, the game rating is based on the actually intended content of the game. You can not rate a game based on modified content even if the content is accessable thru the game. It wasn't intended to be viewable by the playerbase, thus it shouldn't be considered."
A somewhat hard sell in this case, but it matters not now, the ESRB showed some weakness and now they very well may put themselves in jeapordy for it.
Sentack
They left inaccessible content on the DVD, space that could've been used to put less-compressed graphics in, so that I can zoom around at low levels in a Harrier without running into a tree the console hadn't been able to draw in yet?
Burn these people at the stake.
When I was 14 I went to see 'Revenge of the Nerds'. It was rated as 14+ (This was in Quebec, Canada). There's plenty of scenes with tits and ass, and they even show a full "bush".
Now compare this to the ugly graphics of GTA:SA's polygon people...
... that should be blamed - it's the parents, and the fact that the culture hasn't realized gaming has grown up! I have a short essay with stats about this exact news story on my blog: http://blog.myspace.com/jayntampa
Lets not forget that you can disable the censorship (the blocks that appear when you take a shower or use toilet to block the nudity) in the Sims 1 game (probably sims 2 as well) by editing a simple text file setting to go from 1 to 0. And that includes the child nudity from what I hear. Thats child abuse, far more serious than GTA, its time to revoke the Sims rating. And that IS included in the game.
Or how about Q3A or UT2k4? They have nude skins downloadable.
In GTA Vice City, you can buy a movie studio. When you buy it, there are 4 or 5 missions all revolving around porn actresses and movies.
This is in the standard game, no mod is needed. It is even necessary to perform these missions if you want to complete the game 100%. In the cinematics of at least 2 of these missions you can clearly see one actress having sex, with sound and all. And yet, nobody complained...
The last mission for the movie studio has you pointing light spots to a giant building, and every night the spots draw a pair of big boobs...It seems the morons complaining with the San Andreas mod are ok with this...
There's also a mission where you must take pictures of that same actress having sex with a political man named Shrub (an obvious hint at Bush...). Even though you don't see sex while you take the pictures, later in the game you can see the pictures in your main hide-out, and they are quite suggestive...You also see posters of the porn movies on the walls.Yet again, nobody complained.
And anyway, there are hookers since GTA3. As it was said several time before, you can pick them up, have sex, and then kill them to get your money back...There are vans that read "Grüp Sechs", which of course reads "Group sex", etc.
In san andreas, there's also a headless statue of a man with his hand clearly positionned for masturbation...but I guess that's okay.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? The sex that you see in this game is the most moral thing, but hey, sex should only be done once a month in missionary position, and only to give birth, right? right? WRONG, bigots.
I don't understand how people can reach that level of stupidity and bigotry. These parents should give a better education to their kids instead of counting on the TV to do it for them, period.
All in all, it's the same with TV: it's okay to show movies where there's a gun every freakin' second, a murder every minute and people sniffing coke every 10 min, but please, no movie where there's SEX! This is wrong! And oh please if they kill people and sell drugs, they could at least be polite and don't call people names, or use the word "fuck"!! (I recently bought the Scarface -which GTA Vice City is clearly an homage to- DVD, and they removed each and every one "fuck" from the original movie when it was shown on TV...)
Frankly, I think porn is a necessity, and hookers too. I think it keeps a bunch of people from going around and rape women because they need a form of sex.
And then he said: "I'll tell you the meaning of life. It is" and then realized 120 chars are definitely not enough...
The reason for these double-standards is that the movie industry has far more political power than the games industry, especially with Democrats. It is time for the games industry to demand assistance on these free-speech issues from the movie industry, or else the games industry should become extremely vociferous about pointing out all the double-standards that exist between the games and movie inustries. They should also start publicizing the amount of contributions Democrats like Hillary Clinton receive from Hollywood movie studios, and asking the question why those same politicians aren't more vociferous about the sex and violence in movies. If the movie industry doesn't help the games industry out, then they deserve to be next in line for heavy-handed government regulation.
Get the guv'ment going rounding up these obscene games.
Does this mean I should recall my Sims topless skin so kids can't watch my Sim-girls running round with massive naked mammaries? Who knows what kind of person might find that hysterical.
Oh yeah... teenagers. (and Slashdot geeks)
* Making waffles just so I have something to Twitter *
I agree. Rockstar is making megabucks off of selling electronic sleaze, yet they don't take any responsibility for their own screw-ups. I strongly believe in the right of games-makers to sell adult content in their games, but they have to do it responsibly, and take responsibility for their own screw-ups. Rockstar is acting irresponsibly when it sells a game with a lower rating, that actually contains more explicit material. That's like selling MAD magazine to underage kids, and then revealing/leaking later the fact that Oops! two of the pages are stuck together, and if you separate them there is hard-core sex photo spread. Wink, wink! That sure would send your sales through the roof, but it is irresponsible marketing, and Rockstar deserves to have their game re-rated or pulled from store shelves until they release a new version without the hidden content.
First off, the SIMS has a rating of Teen. Not Everyone/Teen. No such rating exists. Gee, where would I get such an idea. Go to http://thesims.ea.com/index_flash.php It says "Products range from Everyone to Teen". Blame EA, not me... that's the rating they put on their web page!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...and I don't think there is any age-enforcement system to prevent kids under 17 from watching. The games undustry is being screwed by political double-standards.
Is the game really sold as a bootable CD-ROM that'll work on the "PC" platform? Or is it, in fact, actually a CD-ROM for the Windows platform, instead of the incorrectly-identified PC platform?
Well...
:-)
:-)
I haven't bought a game in a while, and I love GTA series. So what did I do? I went out and bought this title at my local Fry's.
Funny thing... their Wicked Pictures DVDs are not sold in a protective locked plastic box... but this title is! I suppose that's to actually prompt cashiers to pay attention as to why it needs to be unlocked in the first place.
They put a 18+ notice on the price guidance card.
I think this is the first and last AO-rated title in history to be sold at mass retail. So hold on to your copies. It'll go right next to my Linux version of Quake 3 in tin box.
Maybe this will help jolt people awake as to what absurdity we are dealing with. I commend Rockstar Games for creating this controversy, and for that they got their $50.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Now you've got some production-ready fully-tested code on your hands and you're asked to remove a scene from the game. Now I don't work for Rockstar and I have never seen the code, but maybe removing it would touch too many modules and necessitate a huge retesting effort?
I have definitely been in a situation where there was production-tested code and someone needed a feature removed. Do you remove the feature and all its supporting code from the entire application? Or do you just disable it on the UI? You're goddamn right you disable it on the UI and remove the code on the branch for the next release. You sure as hell don't go touching that much production code just to kill a feature!
So that's what Rockstar did. They disabled the scene by making it completely inaccessable through game play. I would have done the exact same thing.
Would you have been the one who said, "We need to re-QA the entire game."?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Easter eggs (in console games and DVDs) are accessible through the product alone, either by secret menu item or password or button code. In this case it requires a third party modification that modifies 10+ memory addresses to make an if statement true.
But the other points, developers not taking it out (as opposed to the hundreds of people saying that they put it in intentionally), and the suits not knowing it was there, those are valid.