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'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."
Doesn't this game have enough cream and sugar as it? :P
...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).
Where were you when the voynix came?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
what does Eric Clapton have in common with coffee?
They both suck without cream
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!
"release M rating content hidden within a lower-rated game"
You mean A rated content hidden within a M rated game. The GTA series is rated M. The beauty of it is that according to the rating system 17 year olds are "mature" enough to deal with beating innocent bystanders to death with a baseball bat but should not be exposed to nudity or sex.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
People made an awful big fuss of this. The fact is that you had to delibrately do something to even enable the Hot Coffee feature. Sure the company put it in there, but the user had to make a choice and do several things to enable it. Wasn't like it was there for all to see willy-nilly.
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?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
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.