Slashdot Mirror
Surprisingly Few People Collect On GTA Hot Coffee
Relin writes "Out of the millions eligible, less than 3,000 have come forward to collect their money in the 'Hot Coffee' settlement. While the plaintiffs' lawyer is surprised by the development, Theodore Frank of the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute seems convinced that the lawsuit was 'meritless' and will result in no payment for the legal counsel opposing Take-Two."
"Seth Lesser, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs said that he is "disappointed" by the outcome, and doesn't understand why so many people don't care."
It is, after all, just a video game.
I've got your sig, right here.
The time it would take filling out the forms and cashing the $5 check is better spent on something else.
And frankly, anyone who buys Grand Theft Auto, the game that lets you kill hookers instead of paying them, is going to be hard to offend with some sex scene they have to use a hack to see in the first place.
That lawsuit never should have been brought to court, I hope the laywers don't see a penny!
Being that it requited a hack to unlock the feature (aka censors already deemed the code unacceptable) and the kids who downloaded the hack could have just as easily have gotten real porn. It really isn't that big of a deal. Besides who wants to say after buying GTA I am such a prude that I want money to accommodate my suffering. I think most people will say they hypocrisy needs to stop at some point.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So it might just turn out that all that moral outrage and mass hysteria was just a ruse brought up to try and cash in on a game franchise.
Everybody now: "YA THINK!?!"
Perhaps the remaining millions who did not claim the money actually, you know, liked the game?
I don't think it would make sense for gamers to exploit a frivolous lawsuit to get a few dollars out of a company that made a game they enjoyed.
about the suit until now, and I have that game. Maybe the numbers will go up now that /. is covering it...
Suppose I bought some porn video and there was a code that my kids found that let them play a game where they beat people and ran them over for fun. Would I have case?
Who exactly is supposed to care about this?
-Dave
"I read instructions on the Internet on how to mod GTA so that I could see a sex scene, and when I followed those instructions, the game actually let me see a sex scene! Now I feel surprised, shocked and offended and want $5!"
Sometimes I really wonder if there are any normal people left in this world.
are the lawyers. The lawyers don't care if everyone get pennies, because they get their millions. And if there is a settlement or verdict, it should always be in monetary form distributed automatically to every class member. Members shouldn't have to fill any paperwork. The corporations should calculate it for them. Two examples:
1. Bank of America privacy lawsuit.
Fees waived for deposited items getting returned!
Fees returned for calling customer service!
12 months free subscription to a credit card protection service (a $30 value)!
90 free days of Privacy Assist Identity Theft Protection Service (a $17.85 value)!
Hell no. Basically, they get free marketing. OUCH.
2. Visa MasterCard Discovery Currency lawsuit.
They want you to calculate your foreign purchases yourself and document them for your reimbursement. Hell no. They should pay us $400/hr as they do their lawyers for the time we spend sorting through years worth of credit card statements. Some companies even charge a fee for requesting older records.
Settling should not be an option for class action lawsuits. The client/s should decide whether to settle, not the lawyer/s. A settlement should always be an opt-in, not an opt-out.
It's estimated that ladders cost $25 more than they should because of the tort tax.
Heck, look at the price difference between a drug marketed for humans and the same drug, made in the same facility, put in the same bottle, just labeled for animals - a lot of the price difference is the tort cost.
Generics don't have to worry as much, as do drugs that have been out for a long time.
I think that they should put a $50 or so deductible on cases like this - per person. Sure, it'd encourage some companies to try to screw every customer out of $50. But, I wouldn't have the deductible count in small claims court(IE not brought by big lawyer firm), or in cases where people were pursuing independent action. Of course, under $50, most people would be in small claims anyways.
But I tend to dislike the cases where they claim some company screwed people out of money or whatever without them knowing. When I bought some money from crucial - then later received paperwork from some lawyer firm for a class action, I didn't bother pursuing it - because I had paid what I felt was a fair price.
I don't read AC A human right
I've never seen so much consensus in Slashdot comments! And you're all right - the fact that gratuitous violence is more acceptable than sex is sick, sick, sick.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Lawsuits are more about money, especially for the lawyers, rather than defending public rights.
Are you high? *sighs* I'll go on, I'd figured it'd be obvious. It isn't to you so I'll help you along. M'Kay? *grins* (Forgive my attitude - I'm slightly intoxicated at this point.) McDonald's had served coffee at a temperature that was much hotter than the average at that time. McDonald's had known of prior injuries. The corporation had willfully declined to warn customers. (I'd have said the suit was bogus with just a warning - just a warning, but they did not.)
This, in and of itself, is enough for me. The damages done were nothing less than willful negligence. (Yes, I even read your link.)
I'll leave you with this... Some searching, effort if you'd like, will show that I (of all the people on the planet) am not a leftist nor do I typically ascribe to anything the gibberish monkeys put out from either extremist views. That being said, they reason it was legitimate was because they knew that people were stupid enough to keep getting burned and didn't even warn them. I would argue that we don't need a nanny state where people are constantly protected from their own stupidity BUT when coffee burns result in third degree burns and the company knew this but opted to not warn their customers they have failed the checks and the suit was, I feel, legit. I don't know about your state but in mine you can't serve a drunk more alcohol and all sorts of things come with warnings on them. I am no fan of the nanny state that we have going on now BUT I feel this case had its merits and was certainly legit enough. I am not a lawyer.
No, thank you for your time. I love a decent conversation about great topics where we can agree to disagree. In this one I have the advantage of the court already having deemed it acceptable but I'd not just rely on that. Again, I'm not a lawyer. I just have some views of what justice is and I don't think justice should be "just us." In short, the suit was legitimate. Companies serve their coffee as hot today (or even hotter) because now they warn the idiots. Our society is about protecting those who can not protect themselves. (Or at least it *was* at one point. We can argue all day long about if it still is or not.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
GTA is a good game, no worse than any episode of The Sopranos. I've played it heaps, but had no RL urges to shoot cops, run over pedestrians, steal cars or not pay a hooker. The lawyers and moralists who got outraged at some pixelated lowpoly boobies need to get a life and a real job. Did they really think anyone would get out of bed for $5, head to Jack in the Box and declare "This tasty burger and beverage offsets the misery I experienced when I found and downloaded Hot Coffee"?
It's $5
The $5 is supposed to be a symbolic gesture, saying "you were right, we were wrong" to those who "who had purchased the game and been offended.".
It's supposed to be a "emotional closure" for those offended. It is not intended to be a meaningful sum of money you can do anything interesting with. It's symbolic.
If it would be, for example, $1000 USD, then you would have people coming from left and right, with fake receipts claiming the "compensation fee", for emotions they never had.
The reason that so many people aren't claiming their 5 dollars is probably because they never had any feeling of beeing offended by hot coffie.
Come on, seriously, what boy/man would be "offended" by seeing computer characters having sex, after installing a patch do see just that ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc