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LA Attorney Sues Rockstar Over Hot Coffee
Next Generation reports that the L.A. city attorney has filed suit against Rockstar, for a misleading ad campaign and 'unfair competition'. The suit was prompted because of the much publicized 'Hot Cofee' mod discovered last year. From the article: "'Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products - whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume,' Delgadillo said. The lawsuit is actually part of a wider effort to investigate the marketing of videogames."
If they deliberately mislead the ratings board to give them a lower rating, then they're trying to get away with fraud. And yes, they knew that the PC version had a good chance of getting hacked to make the sex scene availible.
They should print out the entire code of the game, and present it to the attorney and ask him tom point out the objectionable scene...
In order to view the Hot Coffee, a grainy, non detailed cartoon fellatio scene, didn't you have to go onto the internet and download the code? If someone has access to the internet, couldn't they download non graing, non cartoon fellation? Isn't this somewhat akin to walking past nude women and Hustler mags to get to the SI Swimsuit issue?
Lawyers sue- it is what they do. You can't get mad at a lawyer for suing any more than you can get mad at a dog for barking....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
'Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products
Wrong.
Otherwise, Sherlock Holmes books would be illegal, because they don't tell you who the murderer is up front.
"whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume"
Wow! I haven't heard an analogy that terrible in awhile. Playing a video game that has content (not accessible unless you unlock it), is most certainly not like selling food with poison as an unlabeled ingredient.
The 2 most notable differences being 1) Video games don't cause death and serious illness, and 2) If there is arsenic in my candy bar it's still bad for me even if I'm not interested in eating poison.
It seems to me that this stupid thinking could be applied to a lot of things. Like what about all those Disney movies that had inside jokes and pranks that were dirty. What about if we sued Leonardo Davinci because of The Last Supper.
Why should any company be held responsible for the actions of a few individuals? Imagine if record labels got sued because of the things that their artists say in their songs. All of these things might not be quite the same thing but they related enough to show that thinking like this only damages a society.
So it seems to me that another idiot jumped on the band wagon of attacking the video game industry because its been in the news and it seemed like the cool thing to do if you want to create a lawsuit and attempt to generate money for a city thats lacking the funds to maintain its infastructure.
And the "sex scenes" themselves were comical, to say the least. First of all, CJ was fully clothed. No penetration or genitalia were shown. At worst, it was full frontal nudity with sexual situations, which would have earned a movie an R rating. The original "M for Mature" was still consistent with the content, in my opinion.
I'm not defending these guys... That content should have been removed prior to the game's release. They really were stupid about it. But it's not like "the children" were exposed to some horrific pornography in an "E for Everyone" game or anything like that.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Is this when we see a dozen other law firms file law suits against all major software houses for not disclosing any other "easter egg" during the past 10 years?
Give me a break. I'll pass on the kit-kat.
Four words: Natural and artificial flavoring.
Doesn't that cover the entire range of anything that might be construed as having "flavor"?
This guy's the limit!
Why isn't there a big uproar regarding the Sims 2 no censor patches that are available?
Hell, you can even get re-skins that add anatomically correct genetalia to the Sims and a nudity patch that can be used to make your Sims run around naked all the time.
The no-censor patch is pretty much the same as the Hot Coffee issue. ie: both patches simply unlock images already contained in the shipping game.
The re-skins are a different issue, since they actually replace the "barbie doll" style nudes that ship with the game with more graphic skins (however, the base nudes shipped with the Sims2 are much more detailed than the images in Hot Coffee)
The whole "Hot Coffee" debacle is a crock of shit. If Sims 2 was as popular as GTA:SA, I'm sure we'd be reading about suing Maxis over the decensor patch instead. But since it's not, there isn't an uproar.
Let's think about this for a moment... Why should they be responsible for what someone else did to their product? The license agreements and such probably even specifically stated that you couldn't mod it, reverse engineer it, etc.
But hey, let's sue some bleach company because some stupid idiot mixed it with vinegar.
Scott Swezey