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Grandma Sues Over Hot Coffee Mod
Bond_James writes "Ars Technica is reporting that an 85-year old New York woman has filed a civil suit against Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive. She alleges that the defendants 'engaged in misleading and deceptive practices in packaging and selling' the game, which she purchased for her 14-year old grandson. This will be interesting, and scary, to watch unfold in the courtrooms. Will the M (17+) rating of the game save Rockstar?"
Rockstar really made their bed with this one, and now they are going to have to sleep in it. Originally I blew this off as a bunch of prudes getting steamed over some mods for a game, but now its been shown that this is a built in 'feature'. I'd like to defend Rockstar, but really cannot as it is affording them special treatment at the expense of other people.
The video game industry & audience has been VERY good to Rockstar; they've enjoyed massive sales & popularity, and at this point 4 sequels to an originally top-down perspective game centered around driving, stealing, and violence. And, with greater popularity comes greater inspection of the product by those who do not like it and wish for it to be banned. Given that GTA is a homing-beacon target for 'family values' type groups, it seems utterly retarded to package a sex game into it without informing the game raters, and then act surprised when players uncover it, then lie about the nature of it, and *wham* you just gave those 'family values' groups all the ammo they need to actually ACT and not just TALK about regulating video games further. My feeling is summarized such that while I do not think Rockstar intentionally tried to screw us this way, they have inadvertantly abused their success in such a way that it will hurt everyone else a great deal more than it will hurt them due to an anti-sex backlash amongst lobbying groups. Remember, with great power comes great responsiblity; with great success built upon the fellow shoulders of your video game colleages, comes the responsibility to not do things that will make it harder for your colleages to do their jobs in their comparatively smaller successes.
And for the record, the Hot Coffee 'game' is entertaining once for the gimmick & shock value, but otherwise is as interesting as Virtual Valerie and definitely not worth the price that Rockstar is going to pay in the end at the hands of moral crusaders.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
I hope they go to court - I want to read about the lawyers for Rockstar giggling while asking this woman questions.
"Ma'am, did you purchase this game for your grandson?"
"Ma'am, did the game packaging have an ESRB rating of M on it and did the back of the packaging say why it's rated M?"
"Ma'am, did you even look at the box when you purchased it for your 14-year-old grandson?"
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
MAN! This whole fiasco is bouncing around the topics here more than a superball! Alright, let's get a few things straight:
Let's set aside all concepts that this 85 year old lady is a shriveled old busy body who wants to feel important. That's Jack Thompson you guys are thinking about; wrong person! Let's try putting ourselves in her shoes for a second.
You are the grandmother of a well rounded 14 year old son. He's getting angsty from puberty and general teenager stuff, but he ain't that bad a kid. His parents let him watch some R rated movies, and don't mind the music he listens to either. They are also pretty tolerant about the games he plays.
So you know your grandson wants this game, and let's say that you know at the very least that it is pretty graphic, but IT DOESN'T CONTAIN ANYTHING HE HASN'T SEEN BEFORE! If he's watched R rated movies, he's probably familiar with the violence. If he listens to today's music, then the game's language ought to be no shock to him.
So TRUSTING that there was no softcore or hardcore sex stuff in the game, she buys it and gives it to her grandson as a gift.
THEN you find out that the company slipped in this mini-game that involves graphic/explicit sex, and you realize YOU were the one that bought it for him. Sure it requires using a cheat device and a cheat code, but with a little web surfing and owning said cheat device, it isn't too difficult to unlock if the effort is put into it.
Graphic sex is THE taboo thing that the grandson's parents and yourselves think he is a BIT young for! Especially at the age when he's first discovering girls and you don't want him to get any misconceptions about the fairer sex.
So now you've bought it, found out about it, and took it away from him before he could go and find that cheat to unlock the sex scene. But now you realize that you're $50 in the hole thanks to that, and right now you should be pretty angry!
So whose fault was it? Was it the ratings board for not properly giving the game an AO rating, reserved for games with graphic sex? Well as it turns out, it wasn't the ratings board's fault because they changed the rating after they found out and proved all of this, so now eyes turn to the company.
Rockstar.
Rockstar has pushed the envelope of controversy and taken it all the way to the bank, and right now you are pretty upset that they hoodwinked the ratings board, and you yourself too. I mean if you can't trust the company who makes the thing, then who CAN you trust?
Now, you want your $50 back, and you think that all other parents and grandparents who are in the same boat as you are should get their money back for the copies they don't want anymore! If there's a recall on the game, then it's only fair to refund the money or replace the discs with clean copies!
So, now we have dear Flo here going to court with a lawyer who ISN'T Jack Thompson, and she, as of right now, can have a pretty good case against the company. They did NOT disclose the mini-game to the ratings board, and it went unmentioned until July when it spread like wildfire, and when something spreads that quickly, you know that it can be easily accessed by any tech savvy kid. 14 is a good age where just about any kid can find any information they want on the net without strict parent control. What's more, trying to block finding the cheats is nearly impossible because SEVERAL sites can have this information!
So, in the board of lawsuits...
1) Grandma has a case against Rockstar because they provided millions of discs to parents who did NOT want graphic sex placed before their kids. Violence and language, and sexual suggestiveness is one thing, but graphic sex is THE MOST TABOO thing possible in media. Movies, books, TV, and radio do not have graphic explicit sex material on them. Think about the last time you listened to a porn scene on the radio, watched full blown sex on TV (BY HUMANS!), read a graphically detailed sex scene in a book, and saw a full out s
1. Grandma buys adult game for minor
... I think the woman is a total bitch trying to cash in on something that had nothing to do with her ... but here's hoping all she ends up with are steep legal fees as she wastes the court's time, and steps closer and closer to her coffin
2. Grandma sues industry
3. Court throws case out
4. Precedent is set and fewer people try to do the same
Don't get me wrong
I lost my virginity at 12 in a vacant house that was still being built with a girl that I had known for 3 hours. At age 16 I got my girlfriend (now wife) pregnant.
.. not likely for lazy teenagers to pursue). I could have asked my parents to buy them for me which would have caused all kinds of problems. I could have stolen them. I could have bought them if I wasn't too embarrassed to do so or if I had the money ($12 for a pack of condoms is a lot for a teenager without a job). Or I could abstained from having sex all together.
So I have something to say about this.
For starters, I understand where parents who are afraid of their children getting pregnant or impregnanting a girlfriend are comming from. As someone who has been down that road I am scared to death for the same thing happening to my daughters.
However, I put a large part of the blame on society shielding children from sex. The reason I got my girlfriend pregnant was because we didn't use condoms. The reason we didn't use condoms was because we didn't have any.
What were my options ? I could have gone out of my way to go to a teen health center where I could have gotten them for free (this was a 2 hour round trip bus ride
Perhaps if society were a little less uptight about sex then my school could have been giving out free condoms in the nurses office. My mother would have offered to supply them for me. I could have been more comfortable asking my mother to supply them to me etc.
Awareness of and exposure to sex is the best cure for teen pregancy there is. I went to highschool up north in a suburb of chicago, where controls on sexual material were VERY lax. You could get even condoms from the nurses office (which, by the way, kills the mood). In my four years there, there was only one pregnancy... which was quite the scandal. Then I moved to the uptight bible belt, where even mentioning sex earns you the title of "deviant devil worshipper". This is the important part---> the High School had to have a DAY CARE added on to it!!! (and this town is a LOT more wealthy and influential than my old neighborhood, god knows, so its not an economic thing.. its a repression/curiosity/forced-self-discovery thing) ... so yes I think people who are upset about their kids accidently seeing sexual material either are VERY stupid or they want grandchildren NOW.
BTW, your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th paragraphs initial letters spell out the word "ShIT".. I am extremely offended by that. It's quite obvious that you as a corporation deliberately put that content into your post. Of course, instead of giggling and getting on with my life, my grandmother has to sue your ass to maintain her dignity.
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