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Take-Two Faces $20 Million Settlement For "Hot Coffee" Scandal
eldavojohn writes "Take-Two has settled with shareholders to the tune of $20 million dollars over the 'Hot Coffee' debacle. Ars brings the details on how a badly-handled situation resulted in shareholders suing Take-Two. '[The scandal] led to a media panic because it was assumed the sexual content was easy for children to get to (it wasn't) or that sex themes were becoming common in games (they aren't). Still, the lawsuit shows how badly the company bungled the situation, and it's easy to see how Take-Two's management directly caused shareholders to lose money. ... The suit alleged far more than a single misstep with Hot Coffee, however. "Take-Two's management was not cooperating or assisting with the Company's audit committee and was failing to keep the Board of Directors informed of important issues or failing to do so in a timely fashion," the complaint stated. Inventory was misstated, as was software development costs."
Its funny that you shoot people, hijack cars, drive over people and do all kinds of illegal things but when theres normal activities like sex that all people do, everyone goes "oh my god things like that shouldn't be allowed!" and bring in the lawsuits.
Weird world, or should I say weird country.
How is this even possible? No matter how badly Take-Two screwed up, the fact is, the game had to be hacked to get it to work! Regardless, who cares? Why are Americans so hung up on these type of issues, such as wardrobe malfunctions, gay marriage, steroids in baseball? In the meantime, bankers have effectively stolen trillions of dollars directly out of the pockets of every American. Less and less people are able to afford health care. Thousands of Americans are needlessly dying in Iraq. Middle class jobs are being decimated. The list is long... America is screwed.
I still can't believe Rockstar had a mandatory recall on a game where you play a criminal, and the games primary objectives including assisinations, pimping, thieving and selling dugs because a third party patch enabled clothed sex scenes. Its almost so daft that I can't believe it. All this uproar over something that everyone does, in a game that glorifies acts thats are illegal almost everywhere and seen as unacceptable by almost everyone on this planet.
GTA SA had the same rating as Manhunt, the game in which you brutally kill people, while having a good look at how you do it (like strangling with a wire, or cutting the throat with the same wire or may more ways of killing people), in GTA SA you can run people over with your car, shoot them, burn them, cut them, explode them and so on. Both games actually depend on you doing that (unlike, say, Postal2 which you can finish without killing anyone). So all this is acceptable to allow people that are 17+ to play. But if you show two people pretending to have sex (IIRC the hot coffee mod showed people fully clothed) then what were you thinking, we can't allow THIS and people would have to wait a year before being allowed to play this game (18+ vs 17+).
Really really weird country.
This wasn't a lawsuit by people upset by the nudity, it was a lawsuit by shareholders, upset that the company had lost money. They felt the whole thing had been poorly managed, and wanted changes. It turns out they were correct, not only was that particular 'scandal' poorly handled, the entire company was being poorly run, they didn't even know how much money they had.
In addition, $15 million will be paid by their insurance company. Though I'll bet their insurance premiums are going up next year.
Qxe4
Make a movie. Kiss a pair of tits and it's rated M. Chop 'em off and it's PG13.
Nicholson said it afaik. And he's damn right. It's more acceptable in movies to kill people than to fuck them. Let's be honest here, imagine killing spree scenes would be like the average sex scenes, we'd get to see people running around with their index fingers pointing at their enemies and shouting "pew pew".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't worry, organized (?) societies at other parts of the world are inconsistent as well.
I reckon the real issue is not depicting sex in itself, but rather depicting it as an entertaining and carefree activity. I doubt it that the whole Hot Coffee debacle would even exist if the Easter egg depicted instead the protagonist involved in worriedly procuring a condom, doing it under the sheets as to not expose himself and his partner (in a closed room), having erection and ejaculation problems and so forth.
It's not that you can't have sexual content; what you can't have is guilt free sexual content. Oh, no, mister.