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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?"
"Warm Tea" mod. Controversy ensues.
Argh.
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 */
Read his page on the hot coffee mod...
Thank God. I'll be the first person to download and patch my PC version of "Grand Theft Auto." I want to shoot people in the face, bang prostitutes, traffic drugs, steal cars, and terrorize police officers without this filthy smut in my game.
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
This just in, Rockstar North pulled a "Speilberg" today by re-releasing their "GTA:San Andreas" game without any guns, sex, or even reckless driving available.
First impressions of the game seem to be mixed, as you're only allowed to walk around town and wave to people.
More news, as this develops.
The crazy thing about GTA:SA is that speaks volumes about the differences in cultures between the US and other countries.
For example, here in the UK, GTA:SA - and its predecessors - got an 18 rating straight off the bat. That's the highest rating ELSPA (The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, equivalent to your ESRB/IEMA) gives to video games over here. I guess its functionally equivalent to your AO rating.
Although I'm not an expert on classifications I'm sure it earnt its 18 rating here due to the strong content - extreme violence, grand theft auto, prostitution and so on. The fact that some time down the line a hidden pixellated simulated sex mode was unlocked was just icing on the cake - the game was already strictly limited to adults anyway.
I am presuming therefore that your M (17+) rating is equivalent to our 15 rating, which presumably means you are quite happy for 15 year old American youths to play out scenes where they can mug people, shoot cops, steal cars, use the services of prostitutes and so forth - but God forbid they see some pixellated nudity and crudely simulated sexual acts.
Will someone please think of the children! (and give them some guys to protect themselves while you're at it)
It's laughable that religious nuts and publicity whores from both parties should seek to decry this tame, lame, disabled mod when the actual:
Personally I think GTA is a blast and GTA: SA is nothing short of a classic, but the hypocrisy concerning this mod is pathetic.
... 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
I bought this game the day it came out, only to find the control setup is horribly broken.
R* used to be so good about this, its a shame to see them go the route of "just another crappy playstation port" producer. Theyve gone through all this trouble to remove this stupid objectionable content, & completely ignored the glaring bugs that keep the game from being playable.
Heaven forbid anyone try to use a controller that isnt a carbon copy of the damn PS2 controller! Fuck you Rockstar, you can keep your damn coffee, just give me a usable control scheme!
The whole point of ther re-release is to remove the "hot Coffee" code.
There will be no "replacement mod", as there will be (according to TakeTwo) no AO content on the disk.
It _may_ be possible for some enterprising young hacker to _add_ content to the game, or produce their own mini-game with new content, but that is a different kettle of monkeys.
Will this be the first of many? How many other games have this content in? And are sold as non-AO? And have sales-figures to match GTA?
Maybe a few less-than-reputable (note: this does not mean small.) games companies may put offensive content in, purely to publices the removal of it, but this will be a minority.
Droid 1: Hey, whats all this buzz about hot coffee? It's all over the papers.
Droid 2: Its a part of GTA they pulled for being rude.
Droid 1: Can we do that? We could use the publicity.
Droid 2: Well, our games have no hidden offensive content...
Droid 1: I'll talk to the programming team.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
If you believe the marketing hype on The Guy Game's website, then there already has been a game pulled for questionable content.
And by "questionable", I mean supposedly/allegedly containing video of a topless 17-year-old girl who had signed release papers allowing the video to be shot but who later came forward and sued Sony/MSFT/Guy Game for including the underage video in the game.
I know I've still seen the game on store shelves this week, so I don't know the current status of this lawsuit or whether the game was pulled and released without her video included.
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.
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.
Who needs this blasphemous piece of software, when you have nice wholesome games like Manhunt?
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.