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Take Two Investigated by New York Grand Jury
cjm182 writes "Over a year after the infamous sex minigame (aka Hot Coffee) was found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the New York District Attorney's office has subpoenaed Take Two Interactive and its subsidiary, Rockstar Games. Reuters reports that a grand jury requested documents relating to 'company officers' and directors' knowledge about the creation and inclusion of the 'Hot Coffee' minigame. This marks the first time Take Two has been asked to provide documents directly relating to the incident. Last week, GamePolitics.com ran an editorial calling for the U.S. Congress to subpoena Take Two directly, rather than criticize the FTC and the ESRB over the incident."
Here's another shocker: They probably wanted it to be discovered for the publicity... but they probably figured it would stay an underground thing. They apparently forgot that it's 2006 and people now spend way too much time "thinking of the children". Back in the day, games would have full on hidden swear words, etc. hidden in there, and it never made the news or whatever. Heck, who hasn't been to an arcade and seen some creatively NC-17 vulgarities on the high score boards?
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If I'm reading that right, I think the Hot Coffee mod should be the least of their worries. The mod may not be a good thing, but the other stuff looks like it has the potential for worse legal repercussions.
Slackware
The documents Take Two hands over will have pictures of supreme court judges fornicating on every page, drawn in invisible ink on top of the boring Memos.
What?
I highly doubt the Directors or Officers of Take Two said "Gee lets insert some Sex Scenes in the game !!"
Then again with how hard the programmers are usually pushed for deadlines, when would they have time on their own to insert a "side quest" ?
far...out
I'm also sure that this coming within meer months of an election is purely coincidental...nothing like a good porn in otherwise respectable video games story to bring out the best in people.
Remember, not only do we "Think of the Children"(TM), we remind you early and often!
(Sure, district attorneys are appointed, but someone's going to pull this out in a commercial plug...)
Umm have you see the hot coffee mod? Its unfinished work. Obviously scraped from development early on.
You make a some really good points about what they were probably doing. But why is the government involved?
The ESRB is "a non-profit self regulatory body that independently assigns ratings". The quote is from their website. How does that in any way have anything to do with the government? Why is legal action being taken against a company based on a private companies recommendations?
That's the problem with this situation as a whole. It's not whether the content was or was not in the it's why is the government involved.
The problem I have with your argument is that it would take kids less effort to locate and download some hardcore porn than it does for them to locate, download, and apply this patch. (Not that it's hard, but it's 50% more steps) :) There's no way to unlock this content with any official product/download. If they offered a patch to enable hot coffee, then I'd agree with you. They didn't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would think that this "potentiality" should be very very close to zero anyway.
Then, lo and behold, there's a whole bunch of D and E hidden in the game that was never advertised, and it was pretty simple for their little angel to find that hidden content.
AFAIK, the "hot coffee" content was not so easily enabled. So I highly doubt anyone's "little angel" unknowningly stumbled upon the objectionable content. This is especially true for the PS2 version of the game. Obviously much harder to enable the content for the PS2 than the PC version.
that it isn't just that it was that the game had sex in it, but that there was no warning of any sort.
Granted it was content included on the disk, it was not content included as part of the game. This was not something you'd simply run into while trying to beat this game. Activating the content was something you had to accomplish on your own with some knowledge of what you were attempting to achieve.
Then your kid unlocks the hidden level where Larry has to brutally, visciously, and mercilessly rape and murder all of the women on a particular block. You do object to that and to your child playing that kind of game, and you would have never let him play that kind of game if you had been warned.
The ESRB rating does not provide a list of all possible activities within the game. Your example is flawed because it is too specific. You wouldn't see a game cover that says: Rated M for Mature: Contains sex, slapstick, and brutal rape and murder of women. This is because it is generalized down to "violence and sexual content." I suppose they could prepend "lots of" to that generalization.
The ONLY way a parent can judge whether a game is "safe" or not for his or her children is to play the game. Now, the ESRB rating helps determine how much playing is necessary. An E game would probably be safe to just let the child play. But if you're going to let your 11 year old child play a game rated M, don't complain when he or she sees stuff that might be designed for mature individuals.
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It's entirely possible it was left in accidently, people with hex editors find stuff left over from earlier builds all the time in games. For example, Bioware got criticism for Kotor II when people found dialogue from a more elaborate ending left in the game (suggesting the game was rushed) and a Japanese preview demo for the game Xenosaga III accidently included all the dialogue for the game. Those weren't Easter Eggs, that was stuff that the companies wished they hadn't released.
On a related note, I read an interview with the people behind Indigo Prophecy were they said they had to take extra care to make sure none of the code for the uncensored European release was in the American version. Normally you would could REM out some code but because of the Hot Coffee incident they had to make a more thorough audit of the code.
Even though I think this got blown way out of proportion, I'm very curious to what really happened.
Should they get in trouble too?
Take Two and Rockstar should have known the possible consequences of what they were doing.
Not really. It would be like a construction working putting pin ups of Playboy or Hustler between the drywall and insulation and then you finding it 5 years lader when you are knocking down a wall.
I mean the construction work is at fault, but is the company who did it really to blame? Unless the contractor foreman sat there and watched the guy do it, then you can't really blame the company with anything other than poor managment.
Its not like it is company policy or a design issue to do these things.
It may have been an oversite... Like during construction one of the workers was making obscene woodcarvings in the studs of the house (no pun intended) and the foreman comes over and says "Hey you can't put that there! Get rid of it!" and instead of removing the studs with the obscene word carvings, the construction worker puts drywall over it to save himself time.
That is most likley what happened with hot coffee. The programmers put it in there thinking it would be cool and the manager says "Guys we can't have this in game! we'll get an AO rating!" and the programmers just wall it up like the lazy construction worker since it would require more effort to hunt down and remove all the code than just remove its accessbility.
Still... We shouldn't be wasting tax money over this issue in persuing selective morality in the courts. We want ethics in our courts so it would be best suited to going after Take Two's alledged fraud.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The stupid thing is that the ESRB's M rating is supposed to be equivalent to the MPAA's R rating. The AO rating is supposed to be equivalent to an NC-17 (or worse) rating.
The Hot Coffee scenes are not NC-17 material, they're R material. There's no wang, there's low quality pixelated boobs, etc. If you've seen any good sex/violence R movies, you've seen worse than Hot Coffee. So either the rating system needs to be addressed or there's a double standard between video games and movies.
I'm all for Take Two getting in trouble for not removing unused questionable content, however crucifying them for what should be a rerating from M to M is getting out of hand. Of course, the ESRB went with the flow and rerated the game to AO.
the alleged content is totally age-inappropriate and should not be in the consumer package. they can put all the hacksmut they want on the development server hidden deep in the bowels of the office, but if any of it gets out on releases, it should be declared.
the way to settle this for ever is the ratings outfits to actually review the stuff they shuffle papers over, and employ a few of the 1337 to search for easter eggs... or in this case, perhaps, easter pornos... and if any are found, the product will remain unrated forevermore.
which keeps it out of the mass merchandisers' hands.
oops, almost forgot... the "ratings outfits" are shills and fronts that nod their head and say, yes, everything is wholesome family entertainment, don't bother us any more.
sorry. my bad.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
where one of the judges recently got tagged and is under trial for meddling with a penis pump during trial of actual cases at the bench.
he may not know pornography, but he'll know what he likes.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"But why is the government involved?"
The FTC. Because if the ESRB ratings are not reliable or the public feels defrauded or decieved, then that gets the trade commission involved.
"How does that in any way have anything to do with the government?"
The ESRB exists to avoid government regulation; if the industry is seen as sufficiently self-policing then no regulation is required. Again, see the previous comment about public trust.
"Why is legal action being taken against a company based on a private companies recommendations?"
It is a subpeona for evidence relating to what they knew about the mod and how it was disclosed to the ESRB. Companies that put games up for ESRB ratings essentially sign a contract and agree to disclosure.
"Not really. It would be like a construction working putting pin ups of Playboy or Hustler between the drywall and insulation and then you finding it 5 years lader when you are knocking down a wall."
Do you people really think that the programmers at Rockstar are idiots? They knew that every piece of code on that disk was going to be combed over by would-be hackers, just as was done with GTA 3 Vice City. They left it in a playable state, and easily unlocked. If you really think they had no intentions of having it found, you are deluding yourself.
It's not really a matter of how accessible it was, it is a matter of it being on the disc in the first place and not being disclosed to the ESRB.
None of this would be going on if public trust in the ESRB and the way developers disclose content wasn't tarnished in some way by the incident; that's the reality of the situation here.
It is a subpeona for evidence relating to what they knew about the mod and how it was disclosed to the ESRB. Companies that put games up for ESRB ratings essentially sign a contract and agree to disclosure.
This would be a valid point if the ESRB were suing TTWO for breach of contract.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
And.... it's animated porn. It's not even real porn. It's a couple animated characters having animated sex. Can that poissibly be more harmful than real porn? Aren't kids already supposed to know the difference between real and make-believe? (Not that kids should have been playing an adult game anyways)
"This would be a valid point if the ESRB were suing TTWO for breach of contract."
No, as it involves the public, not just 2 companies; especially if there was active deception.
Just like the other items they have been subpeona-d for that involve investors, public, etc.:
"...audits, hidden scenes in its video games, partnering agreements, earnings results and acquisitions...Other requested documents seem to focus around corporate governance practices, such as its firing of auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers and hiring of Ernst & Young on April 4."
ESRB originally wrote GTA:SA up for six objectionable "Content Descriptors." But "Strong Lyrics" wasn't one of them, even though there are F-bombs on half the channels. Then in the Second Edition they added a "Nudity" descriptor, even though there was no nudity found.
How careful are these "ratings experts" anyway?
A reminder, and note on definition, from wikipedia:
For many people, the characterising feature of trolling is the perception of intent to disrupt a community in some way. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation. The greater the reaction from the community the more likely the user is to troll again, as the person develops beliefs that certain actions achieve his/her goal to cause chaos. This gives rise to the often repeated protocol in Internet culture: "Do not feed the trolls."
Often, a person will post a sincere message about which he is emotionally sensitive. Skillful trolls know that an easy way to upset him is to falsely claim that he is a "troll." In forums where most users are similar to each other, outsiders may be perceived as trolls simply because they do not fit into the social norms of that group. It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between a user who merely has different values, views, or ideas, and a user who is intentionally trolling. This can lead to genuinely hostile behavior, including flame wars.
The game had the appropriate rating of "Mature" from the very beginning. The hot coffee mod should not have changed that. Yes, they may have witheld hidden game content from the ESRB, but it was not content that was a) accessible through normal play b) content that would make it an AO game. I'm not a lawyer, but I think rationally. I wish these people would too.
Not to mention that there was no lawsuit when the rest of the game involves shooting, beating, and killing other people using numerous methods. Rewarding illegal activity and portraying violence with utmost graphical exuberance.
If you think you can keep track of everything that has been added to and/or removed from code that is being worked on by a team of programmers for years. You obviously never worked on a big project like this. There is way to much going into these games and being pulled out of these games to keep track of everything on every build.
There are so many things that can happen to let things slip through that you didn't want in the game
- It could have been completely removed at one point and accidentally reintroduced later by someone going back to old assets to avoid a new issue
- It would have been impossible to remove completely within the games schedule and they could only limit it's access because of how that code interacts with other code in the game
- It could have been one disgruntled employee putting it into the game because he heard he was about to be let go.
- It could have been partially implemented in millstone, cut, and removed from the documentation before the code was completely removed and therefore forgotten.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. There are plenty of other things that could have happened.
Putting this in the game just because they were trying to cheat the system is not the only possibility and seems unlikely to me. Rockstar never had a problem with having there game rated for mature audiences only before. Why start now?
I think it was somewhere in the middle. The programmers probably realized that enterprising individuals would find the content. They simply didn't expect the level or public backlash it would generate.
The moral of the story? Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between a user who merely has different values, views, or ideas, and a user who is intentionally trolling
You know its possible to do both at the same time, right? Just look at all the George Bush fanbois.
But why is the government involved?
Because Take Two is a publicly traded company. It is not just the ESRB and game buyers who may have been defrauded. The Take Two *investors* may have been defrauded as well, they were not aware of all risks that the company was taking. Assuming of course the scene was left in intentionally.
The rules are very different when you have the public finance your business.
I don't see the problem ...
m &q=l&c=
The real problem here is that Take Two is a publicly traded company.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=TTWO&t=2y&l=on&z=
The rules are very different when you have the public finance your business. You are legally obligated to inform investors of risks. With this in mind it is entirely reasonable to investigate whether the scene was an accident or a marketing gimmick.
From my experience in the dev world, easter eggs are usually created near the end of the development cycle. This is when you've had an entire team coding like mad for months, then tell all but five (or two) of them to stop as (nearly) all the features are in and a few critical bugs need to be taken care of. The managers are still to busy with the current release to give a new project to the programmers waiting in the wings, and with their boredom they start coding... easter eggs.
I mean the construction work is at fault, but is the company who did it really to blame? Unless the contractor foreman sat there and watched the guy do it, then you can't really blame the company with anything other than poor managment.
Not likely. It was probably at one point a feature, and then someone thought better of it and axed it. Do you really think that it was just one guy working on this? At the very least, you've got the programmer coding it, and the artist doing the animations. A coordinated effort probably implies that management was involved somehow.
I just don't believe that this was any one person's doing. When I originally heard about this, my first thought after "I can't believe this is a big deal" was "Those dipshits at Rockstar should have known better."
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Ok.
Let's say you buy a car. A domestic car.
It's a good car, does what it's advertised, etc. You don't have any complaints.
But then you get on the intarweb, and you find out that inside the door is a bunch of pornography. And that you need a special screwdriver to open the door to find out that the inside of the door is a bunch of low-resolution pornography. You can't get to it, unless you take apart the door with a special tool that's not commonly available, but is easily created/duplicated once discovered.
Did the car company do anything wrong?
Answer that question, and the Take-Two issue becomes more clear.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Having not seen the cheat in action, I cannot be certain.
I would guess that the sex game was a full feature for quite a while that was essentially cut do to legal liability. It is very possible that it was cut very late in development. Plenty of games ship with assets on the install disks that are not used by the final product.
This in turn would mean that the feature probably shows up as a feature in a design document somewhere. Take 2, being the publisher, probably has internal documentation debating keeping or cutting the feature, and quite possible a document that ultimately telling the developers to cut it.
Being late in development, the hooks to trigger the missions were probably just removed at a script level. And that would result in the possibility of someone restoring a few lines of game script to re-enable the code.
In any event, I dont see the big deal about this.
END COMMUNICATION
As a former Lead artist (hacking all the way back to 1988), one of our favourite tricks was to write defamatory messages (usually about a producer), using an RGB color value of 001 on a 000 (black) background. No-one ever noticed.
"They were deceiving consumers and trying to game the rating system so that they could sell a few more units to the under 18 crowd."
In what possible way are they deceiving consumers? This content wasn't in the game! You had to go download and install a mod to view it! Without you knowing what you were downloading and installing there was no possible way at all to even pretend to see this content! They said this content wasn't there and for all intents and purposes it wasn't there!