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Hackers Uncensor Manhunt 2
Less than 24 hours after the release of Manhunt 2, you can already play the full and uncensored version thanks to some enterprising hackers. The news for Rockstar is just ... bad: "The game has been censored in the US in order for it to receive an M rating - and therefore a release - rather than the original AO rating it was given by the ESRB. The illegal exploit of the original PSP code indicates that the scenes that were cut in order to secure an M rating were not removed from the full game, rather disabled, much like the Hot Coffee mini-games in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." This is also exactly what prompted the re-rating of Oblivion and Halo 2 for the PC. We should expect to see an ESRB response to this very soon, then.
I agree with you. They should have known better after Hot Coffee. I defended them in the past..no more. With this and the Simpsons thing, Rockstar is moving to my "don't buy from" list.
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If the nude textures were already on the disc, and all that took to unlock it was EDITING A TEXT FILE (INI in this case), sure, Barbie can expect to be horrifyingly owned by the press and subsequently pulled.
Sadly, due to the atmosphere around gaming these days, I think more developers will choose to encrypt their game content, so they have at least some legal leg to stand on if something like this happens to them. While I would like to be quick to blame Congress for this sad situation, I believe the modders have to share some blame for being so fscking stupid, and refusing to self-regulate.