'Hot Coffee' Scandal Officially Resolved

kukyfrope writes "Take-Two Interactive today announced that the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) inquiry concerning hidden sexual content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has formally closed. All outstanding matters pending before the FTC have been settled and no penalties or fines have been assessed. Although Take-Two was not fined, the company will be subject to civil penalties of $11,000 for future violations. 'We look forward to putting this behind us and focusing on what we do best - creating videogames,' said Take-Two President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Eibeler."

Comments

Problems like this are easily solved

[krell]

...when, if someone does not like what is in a game, they simply refuse to play it and move on (no screaming, no lawsuits, no complaints to the government).

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[purrdeta]

I agree but some people dont have anything better to do than complain. Also, I would say kids will gravitate towards that but that is the parents fault for not taking the game away or not buying it in the first place. In the end, it is the parents fault for not paying attention and then filing a lawsuit for their own mistake!

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[ElleyKitten]

This was a "truth-in-labeling" violation. Parents thought they knew what they were buying for their kids, and may have been okay with the violence but not the sexuality of the "hot coffee" scene.

Yes, killing hookers is fine for young'uns, but consensual sex? Corrupt their poor minds!

Any kid who's not able to handle the hot coffee is too young to handle the rest of the game. Not to mention, they'll find more explicit porn just looking for the patch to unlock it.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[digitrev]

It's true. And any child who's smart enough to unlock it on his own is probably smart enough to get access other porn.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[meringuoid]

Parents thought they knew what they were buying for their kids, and may have been okay with the violence but not the sexuality of the "hot coffee" scene.

From esrb.org:

MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

So, parents bought San Andreas for their 17-year-old kids, thinking it contained sexual content, but not graphic sexual content...? Or perhaps they bought it for their 12-year-old kids, not giving a damn what it contained as long as it shut the little sods up for a while? How many parents actually know what the little symbols on the game mean anyway?

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[KDR_11k]

How many parents actually know what the little symbols on the game mean anyway?

Of course they know what those letters mean. They are review scores. Apparently out of 17 because why else would the children ask for games with a 17 and dismiss games with e.g. a 6?

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[Jim_Maryland]

Any kid who's not able to handle the hot coffee is too young to handle the rest of the game.

So do we now look to you for all parenting guidance? Shouldn't we leave it up to the individual parents? Likely what you say is true but I know with my kids that I will use the parental rating information along with product reviews to determine what I think is appropriate for my own kids. As someone else has already pointed out, the problem isn't so much the content but that the content was inappropriately labeled.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[ElleyKitten]

It was labeled not for kids. A quick look at the rating's content descriptors will tell you that it's not for the squeamish. This isn't Wind Waker. This is one of the most mature games available in mainstream stores without hot coffee. As for hot coffee itself, it's a lame psuedo-porn scene where the guy leaves on his pants. If your kids have ever seen a rated R movie, and if they're playing rated M games they probably have, then they've seen more explicit "porn" than in this. If you allow them enough access to the internet to find the patch to enable it, then they've seen way more explicit porn.

I just don't see why it was that big of a deal.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[ScottLindner]

You're all right, but at the end of the day a parent needs to be able to make informed decisions to raise *their* child the way *they* want to and not leave the Internet to do it for them.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[Ebola_Influenza]

some of us (parents) actually read and understand the symbols. it's definately the parents' stupidity to blame on this one...a little forethought, and this would never have been an issue. either sexual content is ok for your kids, or it's not.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[Killall -9 Bash]

Because parents aren't deciding based on the labeling, they're deciding based on their child bitching and moaning and whining, and for (non-)parents who don't have the backbone to say "no" to their 8 year old, the only solution is to make sure games with themes they find objectionable (sex, violence, atheism, etc.) don't exist, because if they do exist, little Fucknugget Jr. is going to want it, and Mr and Ms Fucknugget just came home from a long day at work and don't want to be hassled.

This is the same shit we see with television censorship. The V Chip has been in all TVs 13 inches or larger since 2000, why the fuck do i still hear shit about television content??? If you don't want to see certain types of content, fucking disable it!!! Then again, this may be too much to ask of the baby-boomer generation that can barely figure out how to get the 12:00 to stop blinking on the VCR.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[bonk]

Yeah. If I want to raise my kid to be a violent sociopathic gangster with no respect for human life or property, that should be my right. And I'll be DAMNED if someone tries to go behind my back and teach my kid that consensual sex with a female is acceptable.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[ehrichweiss]

You talk trash about liberals, some/most of which likely don't believe what you're implying that they do, and yet still have the nerve to act like someone else is trolling beside yourself. You ever stop to think that every goddamn one of us is a mixture of liberal/conservative, republican/democrat all in one, that we all have a wide variety of beliefs, that even some democrats are NRA members, that some republicans would like to balance the budget, etc...... unless we're really, really retarded?

I know you're trolling, but to a certain extent it is your right to raise your children however you want. It certainly shouldn't be the government's job! Just don't try to tell a libby that.

Nope, never crossed your, lack of, mind. Keep up the fight to make sure we're all ignorant and polarized against one another so we can be distracted from the real problems that do NOT involve political affiliations.

Re:Problems like this are easily solved

[andrew_mike]

This was a "truth-in-labeling" violation. Parents thought they knew what they were buying for their kids, and may have been okay with the violence but not the sexuality of the "hot coffee" scene.

I call BS. Said content wasn't even part of the game, and should not have been considered. Even so, GTA is sufficiently notorious that parents should've known what they were getting their kids into. If they didn't, the giant "M" on the cover was a not-so-subtle hint that this game may not be appropriate for Little Suzie. With current corporate policy, the parents have to buy the games.

Any parent that buys their child this game and then sues for being incensed by the game's contents is guilty of being a bad parent.

Re:slap on the wrist

[Surt]

Shouldn't they have gotten off easy?

1) They weren't OTA, and they didn't use public resources to distribute their speech.

2) This is the F T C not the FCC.

3) The content in question was not accessible without a DMCA violation.

Why should this have even been an issue for Take 2?

Re:they do that best?

[gregbains]

IIRC an AO will not be sold in shops like WalMart who prefer to keep such games away from their "good family morals" business, losing out on the WalMart market is a bigger loss than just losing out on the 17 market

Backward sexual attitudes in this country...

[LinDVD]

Unfortunately, there will be another issue sometime that will raise the ire of people who can't deal with the topic of human sexuality openly. I wonder what it would take for this country will ever "grow up?"

Re:Bullsh*t! It was NOT a violation of ANYTHING!

[pbhj]

>>> "There is no reason why Take Two/Rockstar should be held accountable for the release of something that was never meant to be available in the first place."

Wow, that's naive in the extreme. "never meant to be available". Er, yeah, right!

Take Two: Like, ooh darn-it how did we accidentally develop and leave in all those extra bits and then get our friends to release a patch making us ten times more money than we would have made. Shucks, best not do that again.

Goverment: We'll fine you $11k if you do that again, naughty boys.

Take Two: That'll hurt our 20 million* profits for sure...

[ * - yes I made it up.]

Re:Bullsh*t! It was NOT a violation of ANYTHING!

[AbRASiON]

Wow, that's probably one of the most stupid posts I've seen on slashdot in a while, -congratulations.

They got "their friends" to release a patch eh? - the PC gaming guys trawled through the data files looking for stuff and found this, once discovered I beleive it was then attempted on the consoles with a gameshark device and also found.

As for increased sales due this, L.O.L indeed - rockstar get an obscene (note the pun) amount of sales with or without some shitty little porn section of the game.

Think before posting.

Uhhh except all games do that

[Sycraft-fu]

All the time games leave assets in they don't use. It's a problem that MS is actually working to solve with the Xbox 360 dev kits (to save space). You make an asset for a game, maybe a level, model, texture, or even whole mini game that just doesn't make it in to the final product. However you don't remove it since you don't know what else relies on the presence of that, and since space usually isn't short.

My bet is they made the Hot Coffee game, realised it'd get them an AO rating, and so cut it. Pure and simple.

You can see a similar thing with Civ 4. There's mods that will add some "lost wonders." These are wonders with full videos, info and everything, they are fully produced. Basically, Firaxis planned on using them, but then cut them later, I believe for game balance reasons. However they didn't bother to remove the assets so witha bit of XML and LUA modificaiton, they can go back in the game.