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GTA: San Andreas to be Re-Released Next Week
404Ender writes "According to GameStop and EB, the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will finally be re-released without the controversial "Hot Coffee" content and clean of anything that might demand an AO rating. Will this be the first game in a series of many to come that will be pulled off the market to be changed due to questionable content? How long before a Hot Coffee replacement mod is produced?"
Otherwise how will it be "clean of anything that might demand an AO rating"?
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
Them then re-releasing the Hot Coffee version as a special adult-only don't-have-to-hack-the-code release (which I'm guessing some people would buy) and making MORE money from this. Which would be exactly the opposite that the original complainants were attempting to achieve, no?
Um, I don't know about you guys, but as I see it GTA is not something suitable for kids regardles off the amount of booty shown.
Any game with that amount of violence should be adults only. It's funny as hell, but it really does demand a mature mind... IMHO anyways.
.: Max Romantschuk
... killing and torturing people to death isn't questionable in the US, and so hasn't been removed?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"SAVE OUR KIDS FROM THIS SMUT"
Of course the fact that the idea of the game is to kill innocent people and steal cars and is actually NAMED after a felony offence is fine...
Just don't you dare show any breasts, because breasts are evil, breasts corrupt.
Life immitating Simpsons... next stop the art gallery.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Correction, GTA:SA and its predecessors got an 18 rating from the BBFC, not ELSPA. ELSPA ratings are an advisory system, whereas the BBFC ratings are legally binding.
You'll also notice that nobody seems to really care about the Hot Coffee debacle in the UK anyway - the most we've seen are a few references to the "outrage" in the US and Oz.
I am presuming therefore that your M (17+)
.. shoot people with real guns: 17
In our defense... you can join the military at 17 in the US. It would also be a little stupid to say "you aren't allowed to see violence in video games, if you want to see that... go to Iraq!" In other words, shoot people with computerized guns: not until 18
Here in the states the government has decided that its okay for kids to murder, steal, and cuss every third word but its not okay to see any sexual content. is it not ironic that americas youth are violent? They are sex starved desensitized to violence thugs! (im getting old) ---gets off soapbox---
Well where I live, Israel, the game got a 18+ PEGI rating.
But that doesn't it stop it from being sold next to other 18+ rated games in general computer stores you can find in any mall.
I don't know if it's because we have much bigger problems than game regulation or the people here are smart enough to know it doesn't fucking matter. If a kid here wants to play the game, the kid will play the game. If not by buying, then by copying from a friend.
Moreover, any kid that can find the hot coffee mod on the net, can certainly find more REAL porn than they could ever need. So again the point is moot.
^_^
What still bugs me the most about all this is that they gave it an AO rating when there are games out there such as PLayboy: The Mansion, that get an M rating...something in the rating system is broken.
Yeah, it's broken all right... the GTA never should have gotten an M in the first place.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
No, the main difference is pure psychology. There is technically a one-year difference in the "recommendations" between M (17) and AO (18); however, most chain stores will carry "M" but they absolutely refuse to carry "AO". This is exactly the same thing as theatres that will show "R" rated movies (under 17 must be admitted by parent or guardian) but will absolutely refuse to show "NC-17" (no one under 17) purely because of the psychological stigma that people seem to have against the various ratings.
Mind you, there are no laws, at least on a nationwide level, that say that stores and theatres must adhere to the ratings of games or movies. They're all purely voluntary. Unfortunately, too many Americans put so much emphasis on ratings that they're completely blindsided and outraged with stupid stuff like the "Hot Coffee" mod occurs.
I am a red-white-and-blue, flag-waving American conservative, and even I am appalled by the astounding hypocrisy regarding sex. A movie or game can have "F" bombs every third word, blood, violence, death, horror, and destruction and it will receive a mediocre rating of PG-13 or M. But if any sex is involved -- WHOOSH! -- hear that rating skyrocket to R or AO even if there are comparatively few vulgarities, blood, violence, death, horror, and destruction.
The whole "Hot Coffee" thing is so ridiculously overblown just for the purposes of advancing the political agendas or stealing the spotlight on both sides of the political spectrum that it almost makes you want to engage in violence against the opportunists. So, I guess there might be some validity about video games causing violence, but only when ridiculous accusations and moral condemnations are made against those games. I have no intentions of playing "GTA:SA" just because that's not my type of game, but I still might buy it just to show support for Rockstar.
If these people are so against sex, then the best thing that they can do for all of us is to not reproduce.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Yeah, ages are all messed up in the United states. If your birthday is in November, you can technically graduate college (in a 4 year program), and be working before you are allowed to start drinking alcohol. (at age 21) Yet you are allowed to vote, at 18. Join the army at 17. Besides what's the difference between M and AO. 1 year. At that rate, they may as well just drop the AO rating, bring M up to 18, and relieve all the confusion.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Well, i don't really get it...i mean come on!
Every now and then i get surprised on how much those critics are really off with their ratings!
It 's like saying : "It is ok to steal cars, to kill people and to deal drugs, as long as we keep the game 'clean' with no sex content and no swearing!"
Come on, people!! If children were really influenced by the video-games they play, I'd rather have a kid playing the Old Larry games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry than any other violent content game! I mean sex is better than shooting people, right?
And don't even get me started on swearing! Did you know that the cursing words are not in the same part of your brain where other words are regularly stored? Therefore recent studies have showed that cursing is more a physiological necessity than a habit!
Let's put the game on as it is and let the children play! I mean if parents are not around to teach their children right from wrong, we cannot expect video-games do that for them !!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Don't give them any ideas, for most other games releasing the same game with a different city would be considered an "expansion pack".
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Dear God, man, there are CHILDREN playing this game !
I'm not sure if your comment was meant to be ironic, but i'll bite...
It's obvious that this game is not meant to be played by children. I know its an old argument, but stupid parents are the problem. If only people would better educate their childs instead of letting the tv, video games and school taking care of it.
Why are these kind of things always "resolved" by the lowest common denominator?
A couple of days ago I read something along like this : 90% of all the people need to be told what to do, wich I believe is true. But WTF is this society? Do we want this? Like many others here, I don't feel like I belong to the 90%, but why should we suffer the consequences?
This is a stolen sig.
> I'm not sure if your comment was meant to be ironic
;)
Then you need to recalibrate your irony detector
> I know its an old argument, but stupid parents are the problem
I agree with the sentiment, but in this case I think it's a societal uptightness about sex. I never cease to be
astonished by the levels of tolerance people have for gore and violence, so much so I can barely sit through what
qualifies for an R rating these days, but they have no tolerance whatsoever for the natural and wonderful act of
sex. The fact that we see the truly astonishing level of violence we do on the same stations that flew completely
off the handle when Janet Jackson's tit flopped out for a tenth of a second says something really dark and
disturbing about our society's appetites.
Now, I don't think we should censor ANY of this stuff, although I'm fully in favor of labelling and warning people
so they can make educated choices, but if I had to choose between a sex scene and a guy getting lit on fire,
it's not a tough decision. =)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Just a friendly reminder that the Hot Coffee controversy is not about sex in GTA. It's about Rockstar defrauding the ESRB to get a lower rating so GTA would be carried in Walmart and Gamestop and other stores that won't carry AO games. Rockstar was contractually obliged to reveal all content to the ESRB. (I work for a major game developer, not Rockstar, and I know that we must disclose all disk contents to the ESRB.) They didn't disclose the sexual content, and once they were caught they lied about putting on the the disk and tried to blame some hacker who found the enabling bits.
Game developers can put whatever content they want in their games. Nobody is stopping them. (Not even congress.) But you can't lie about it to the ESRB. Don't get caught up in the "is sex worse than violence?!" argument. That's not the point. The point is that sex won't get carried in Walmart, but sex sells, so Rockstar put sex in the game and lied about it to the ESRB.
As a game developer, I'm pissed as hell at Rockstar for screwing things up for the rest of us. If you're gonna put sex in the game, at least fess up to it. Don't act all surprised and say, "Goodness, how did that get in there?" What a bunch of cowards.
What still bugs me the most about all this is that they gave it an AO rating when there are games out there such as PLayboy: The Mansion, that get an M rating...something in the rating system is broken.
Yeah, it's broken all right... the GTA never should have gotten an M in the first place.
Why is it that anyone who's critical of this stupid game gets modded as a Troll or shouted down? It's an offensive game.
I'm not a pacifist by any stretch of the imagination. Truth be told, a part of me really loves it when someone in the real world does something horrible enough to make me feel morally justified in releasing my anger and pounding the shit out of them.
I dropped out of uni when I was 17 and went hitchhiking around the country for years, and saw some pretty ugly shit climbing my way out of the streets when I stopped travelling. I've personally, in real life and with my own bare hands, hospitalized people for engaging in the kind of behavior encourages in that game, and I damn well liked doing it.
That, for me, is the great thing about violent video games that is never appreciated by defenders of either side of this debate. They don't, generally, just have violence for violences sake, but acutally set up situations where, were you placed in them, you could turn loose your vicious side in good conscience and without guilt.
But that's not what this game is about at all. This game is about going out and engaging your violent side for fun and money. It's in a very small group, populated by the likes of Postal, and distinct within that small group in that it takes itself seriously.
I feel there is a place in this society for games that encourage you to express the heroic warrior inside. I do not feel there is a place for games that encourage you to express the anti-social violent psychopath inside. I expect I'll feel the same ugly thrill I did beating up pimps and rapists should I ever be forced to beat the shit out of some shopkeeper for selling one to my kid because I couldn't legally have them shut down.
Enjoy your game.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth