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.'"

Comments

Hmm..

[trmj]

I believe that Penny Arcade's news and comic today sum up this whole situation best.

The Video

[Anonymous Coward]

GTA San Andreas "Hot Coffee"

Coral Cache of some of the content in question:

http://files.gtanet.com.nyud.net:8090/gtasa/videos /hotcoffee.wmv

Get it while it's hot?

Glad I bought it last week, then.

[EvilMagnus]

I thought something like this might happen. It's asinine, but pretty predictable.

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.

The ESRB is suggesting that they may change the rating of the game to Adults Only, a category that by their own definition should see a great deal more use in a retail environment. This is great. Look at the descriptions for these.

MATURETitles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language.

Or, as the rest of our culture calls it, "Rated R." Check out AO.

ADULTS ONLY Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

This can't seriously be their distinction. The scenes are longer? I played Resident Evil 4 nearly 26 hours, all told. I'm going to say that maybe nineteen hours of it was spent looking down the iron sights at humanoids. The reality is that once a person is 18, a violent videogame is fairly minor in the spectrum of "adult" content available to that person. Looking over my collection, if the duration of the violence is the distinguishing factor, I'm trying to figure out what purpose Mature serves other than to remove the stigma from otherwise "adult" content and grease the wheels at retail.

Yup, that's it. Time. Pretty incredible.

Re:People are still having sex

[badmammajamma]

Yes, running around carjacking cars, shooting people, and beating up whores is American as apple pie but SEX?!?! OMFG...what are you people thinking?!

Re:nice publicity

[the_skywise]

As an ex-game programmer, there's TONS of stuff we left in various games. Some intentional, some not so intentional.

I can't speak for how GTA is setup, but in our case some of the stuff went out because of a lock down in the code/data. When *any* change would be considered a potential to introduce bugs it was safer to lock down *everything* and go as it was.

Re:What if...

[m50d]

"After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that sexually explicit material exists in a fully rendered, unmodified form on the final discs". That's why they're changing the rating. Of course they don't rule on completely player-created content.

Re:Is "The Sims" also rated AO?

[Nf1nk]

on the sims2 there is a simple one word cheat you can type and eliminate the blurring, giving you access to far more nudity and sex than the hot coffie hack, to be fair the hot coffie section is more graphic. but the sims 2 is still rated T

Re:17+, 18+, whatever...

[houghi]

And thanks to internet, they can learn how to use it coorectly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck

An important thing to realize..

[vhold]

A lot of people are running around in here wondering what is so important between M and AO as if there is no big reason for R* to care.

Basically Wal-mart won't carry AO.

Senate Testimony to that effect

In the case of video games (for example, Sony Playstation or Nintendo games) and computer software, we use the ESRB, Entertainment Software Rating Board, ratings (EC, E, T, M, and AO) as we make decisions about which products to carry. We do not carry software rated adults only (as rated by the ESRB). As a rule, we do not carry Parental Advisory stickered products.

That is all.

Re:In other news...

[DavidTC]

Game Shark codes are not cheat codes.

A Game Shark modifies memory locations within a game.

It's, gasp, modifying the game!

Cheat codes are things you type in in the game. There is no way, within GTA, to get to this minigame, via pressing buttons, documented or otherwise, or doing things with your character.

Seriously, we're having some sort of total terminology failure here.

Here is the actual facts. If anyone is found repeating anything else, they will be beaten publically, and a minigame around that will be included in the next GTA:

This minigame, like all minigame, is enabled when you do certain things. Rockstar removed these things from the game, and thus you cannot, under any circumstances, get to the minigame from within the game.

What all the mods do, either the Game Shark or the saved game hack, is tell GTA that you have, in fact, completed these nonexistent prerequisites.

There is a debate if one of the hacks adds a nude texture for the female, but I don't see any evidence of that.