'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

More evidence that sex is expensive

[hackstraw]

From the last line in the article:

The removal of San Andreas from most retailers' shelves followed by a re-rating of the title resulted in a loss of nearly $25 million.

Ouch!

Re:they do that best?

[meringuoid]

Yeah. And I daresay controversy like this only makes kids want San Andreas all the more.

Why not just rate every damn thing 'AO'? Certainly in the UK, GTA and similar games are rated '18' just for the violence, so 'Hot Coffee' wasn't a problem. Had it been included fully in the game, it would still have been an '18'.

There's no way a GTA game should be aimed at children. What's the quarrel between an 'M', which I gather means '17', and an 'AO' which means '18'? Shame to lose out on the seventeen-year-old market, I suppose, but it would free Rockstar to put what the hell they liked into the game without worrying about whether some deleted scene will resurface and cause trouble.

Re:they do that best?

[meringuoid]

Retailers not 17 year olds, retailers won't stock it on the shelves if it's AO. Why?, because in some twisted marketing mindspace things nasty enough for mature teenagers only (graphic violence and aluded to sex) is credible, where-as adult only items (boobs) are the kiss of death to your credibility as a store.

Hmm. Interesting.

Very well... when the time comes to release GTA: TOKYO 2050 or whatever the next version might be, release the FULL-BLOODED version which Rockstar actually want to put out, and also the PARENT-SAFE version for Wal-Mart, in which we replace all the sex scenes with, oh, our hero dancing happily with Barney the Dinosaur or something like that.

Then put up the patch to convert PARENT-SAFE up to FULL-BLOODED on ftp. Like the Carmageddon guys did back in the day, when censors forced them to replace pedestrians with green-blooded zombies. Back then, every PC games magazine put the Carmageddon blood patch on every cover disk for months, for the benefit of non-wired readers. I'm quite sure the same would happen with GTA.

If you make it absolutely clear that the patch is AO content and will convert your wholesome, ultra-violent GTA game to a sexually deviant, ultra-violent GTA game, and that it's for those who accidentally bought the wrong version, you should be in the clear. There's no sex on the disk bought by the parents in the shop - so they knew what they were buying. There's plenty of sex on the later download, but hey - if you install AO patches, you expect AO content, right?

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

[WidescreenFreak]

I am so sick and tired of hearing that this is a "truth-in-labeling" violation! This was nothing more than a "protect the children" witch hunt!

The segment in question was included but was never meant to be accessed! It took someone else's hack, which might or might not have been in violation of the game's EULA, to release it. Therefore, the accessibility to that whole section of code was not authorized by Take Two or Rockstar. Yet they were made the scapegoat in nothing more that a politically-charged witch hunt. There was abosultely NO REASON for Take Two/Rockstar to disclose that information because they had NO EXPECTATION that it would ever been seen by any customer.

For example, let's say that I included the following type of code in a huge program that I'm writing. (No comments about the Perl. I'm just making an example.)

$ESRB = "Neutral";
if ($ESRB eq "Evil") {
print "The ESRB is a bunch of fucking, holier-than-thou, moralistic morons.\n";
print "And you're mother's ugly, too.\n";
}

Obviously, that code is never meant to be seen because $ESRB is being explicity set to bypass the if statement. So, I compile the whole program, with the code that was never meant to be seen, get a "T" rating for the whole program, and release the program. In my EULA is an explicit statement that no one is allowed to modify the code.

Then some moron sees it in the compiled code and releases an unauthorized hack to change $ESRB to "Evil". Suddenly, there's a big bruhaha because it should have been "M" due to the language of the code.

Now the ESRB and Thompson are on my case for not revealing the code that was in there. WHY? The code was never meant to be seen - not even as an Easter egg. There is no reasonable expectation of me letting the ESRB know that the code was in there because there was no reasonable expectation that it would ever be seen. Someone went in without my permission and modified the code to see something that was never meant to be seen.

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. This was nothing close to a "truth-in-labeling" violation. It was a do-gooder, "for the sake of the children", witch hunt. Rockstar took the high road and just let it slide, which was probably the best PR they could have done, but they were nothing more than a scapegoat.