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."

Comments

Not surprised

[Monkey_Genius]

"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.

Re:Not surprised

[corsec67]

It is, after all, just a video game.

It is a video game where you can regenerate health with the services of a prostitute, kill her when she gets out of the car, take your money back, kill a cop and steal his cop car, kill national guard members and steal their tank, and these people are worried about a little bit of clothed dry humping?

Re:Not surprised

[GroeFaZ]

Free worldview improvement suggestion of the day: Google for "this is not a pipe"

Re:Not surprised

[ThreeGigs]

doesn't understand why so many people don't care

Ahh, but they *do* care.

They care that to get their five bucks they have to fill in a few blanks. Like with their name and address. And somewhere, in some database will be a bit of trivia about just what it is they do on their computer. And I don't remember all the terms of the settlement, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to obtain the names of all claimants. Imagine someone posting *that* list on a public webserver that Google indexes.

Re:Not surprised

[Gewalt]

I woudlnt be ashamed to be on a list of people that own GTA, but I would be ashamed if someone thought I had asked for a rebate because a game included the content I was looking for when I bought it.

Re:Not surprised

[Awptimus Prime]

It is a video game where you can regenerate health with the services of a prostitute, kill her when she gets out of the car, take your money back, kill a cop and steal his cop car, kill national guard members and steal their tank, and these people are worried about a little bit of clothed dry humping?

Exactly. I bought this game and enjoyed it. There's no way I would stick it to the people who gave me so many hours of fun game play.

I really doubt any of the people actually purchasing this game were offended. There might be an occasional stupid parent who thought the hyper-violence in the game was tolerable, but the nudity was over the line. Regardless, it was baseless, in my opinion-- and the people who are okay with violence and freak out over nudity are rather scary. I would not enjoy living in their heads. Give me nude women any day over guns. I'll take both in my video games when it's an option, though.

Actually, the people who have a stranglehold on America's censorship are the scariest of all. Every other TV show or movie have probably ten times the violence than sex. I remember in the 1970s and early 80s, you could, at least, see the occasional boob on UHF broadcast. Something went wrong somewhere.

Re:Not surprised

[networkBoy]

That makes me so, so sad.
My wife and I have had long discussions about that very topic, and we've both agreed that sex/nudity/etc. is ok for the kids to see, but Violence is what we want to protect them from.

That my 5 year old daughter knows she has a vagina and that her brother has a penis actually offends people. My son (3) also knows the appropriate verbage to describe his body. Meanwhile one of my daughters friends thinks that she has a "WooHoo".

Which is more degrading to a woman?
Which is more useful in a conversation with a doctor?

I'll shut up now since I'm just rambling, but suffice to say when my daughter walked in on me playing GTA the other day she admonished me to stop at red lights and not run anyone over. :-)

Re:Not surprised

[Wavicle]

Extremely off topic, but...

Over at a skeptic forum I frequent, someone involved in investigating child sexual abuse made a rather enlightening post about children and the names of their body parts: TEACH THEM THE PROPER NAMES OF THEIR BODY PARTS. The argument went something like "investigating this is hard enough without having to figure out what a 'cookie' is."

Re:Not surprised

[drinkypoo]

Are you really surprised to find out that there are stupid people having children?

Re:Not surprised

[A beautiful mind]

Violence and sex are both deeply rooted in humanity's past. One important distinction might be is that sex is a more hierarchical, selection driven aspect. The one who gets to reproduce wins. Violence just happens, due to outside factors or it is a tool to enforce sexual wants. A huge number of contemporary murders are due to jealousy and "love sickness".

This makes me think that sexual behaviour, the display of sexual behaviour and the depiction of sexual behaviour would tend to be more sensitive subject in the standard psychological setting.

It takes conscious effort and education to get rid of this feeling.

In today's world it is not a bad policy to excercise reasonable restraint on one's sexual behaviour (I'm thinking avoiding sleeping with everyone), because while violence is condemnable, sex causes violence. Yeah, some people are enlightened enough to handle sex (polyamorous relationships), but most of the people are not like that and it leads to extreme feelings, which then leads to violence.

Re:Not surprised

[Opportunist]

Jack Nicholson summed it up rather nicely: If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.

And the same applies to games. Ain't that scary? I mean, remember what those things are actually good for? Tits aren't "not suitable for children", they are first of all suitable for children, for crying out loud! That you might pop a boner when you see some is maybe some additional value, but not their primary function.

That's what's really wrong with censorship, and society as a whole. It's more acceptable to show how people hurt each other than showing how they pleasure each other.

We really are sick, sick animals.

Not worth my time.

[iansmith]

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!

Well is it worth it.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Well is it worth it.

[Chris Burke]

the kids who downloaded the hack could have just as easily have gotten real porn

Yeah, that's exactly why this whole issue has always cracked me up. Oh noes! If a kid goes unsupervised onto the internet, he may download a mod for a game that would show him low-poly-count boobs. We need to stop this, prevent minors from buying GTA, make Take Two release new discs without the content on it, and then, at long last, kids won't be able to find boobs on the internet!

Really, it's just too funny.

Re:Well is it worth it.

[badboy_tw2002]

Not to mention that the game is rated M in the US - which means that the only people who Take2 was (legally) selling the game to that couldn't legally watch porn were 17 year olds. The same 17 year olds who can see full frontal nudity and way racier sex scenes in an R rated movie, or even on M rated TV (anyone watched Nip/Tuck lately?)

Maybe they liked the game?

[xRelisH]

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.

odd

[bigdavex]

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?

Re:odd

[b4dc0d3r]

Your kids would be taken away because you allowed them to access porn. Thank the puritans.

Seriously...

[Golden_Rider]

"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.

The only people benefiting.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

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.

Re:The only people benefiting.

[corsec67]

Easiest solution would be to require lawyers to be paid in the exact same manner as the class in a class action suit.

If they class gets coupons, the lawyers should get coupons.

SURPRISED!

[throatmonster]

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.

Re:Any surprise?

[AftanGustur]

Any surprise?
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 ?