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."

Comments

RE

[Alex P Keaton in da]

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....

Um no...

[voice_of_all_reason]

'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.

Food != Entertainment

[Fr05t]

"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.

Not a big deal

[Psmylie]

It's funny how the media and certain high-profile figures make this seem like such a huge deal, as if Rockstar/Take-two was giving away free GTA:SA disks at Elementary schools across America. We all know that the Hot Coffee scenes took some time and skill to uncover, and though the patch itself was easy enough to apply, it still took some effort to go out and find it. It's not like the sex scenes were sitting there waiting for a cheat code to be entered or anything.

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.

Re:Sorta has a point

[mausmalone]

Actually, there's really no evidence to say that anybody in management or even most of the programming staff knew that there was a "good chance" (or even remote chance) of it being hacked. The most likely scenario is that the DMA guys were kicking the idea around and decided not to put the scene into the final game, but neglected to remove it properly from the code and from the art. I'd be willing to be dollars to doughnuts that this was almost entirely a case of one guy making a minor screw up, and that's why I'm pissed at all these people who want to crucify Rockstar and Take2 over this. It's so insanely trivial and inane that it actually makes my brain hurt.

Not their fault

[Scott Swezey]

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.