Take-Two Settles "Hot Coffee" Lawsuit for $20 Million

[Keane Ng]

Take-Two Settles "Hot Coffee" Lawsuit for $20 Million

Take-Two has reached a settlement in the class-action lawsuit brought against them for allegedly knowingly putting the "Hot Coffee" sex minigame into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Hey guys, remember that whole "Hot Coffee" scandal? Man, that seems forever ago. Who knew back then that now we'd be playing games with wireless controllers and the latest and greatest form of media storage is something called the Blu-Ray? Who also figured that four years later, Take-Two would still be settling legal affairs relating to "Hot Coffee." I know the courts take forever in this country, but yeesh.

Well, I'm sure it's a load off of Take-Two's lawyers minds that this class-action case against the company has finally [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/85395-Hot-Coffee-Lawsuit-Settlement-Derailed] been settled. More than that, I'm positive it's a load off of Take-Two's bank account: the settlement amounted to a hefty $20,115,000 that will be placed in a fund for the "benefit of class members." Around $15 million is being paid for by Take-Two's insurance carriers, while the other five is coming out of Take-Two's pockets.

"We are pleased to have reached this settlement, which represents another important step forward for the Company," Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said.

Sure took them long enough.

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[Nimbus]

Who were they being sued by, and why?

 

[JRCB]

Wow. The guys they were fighting against are persistent! And $20 Million? For a sex minigame?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Who were they being sued by, and why?

Yeah, I really lost track of what was actually wrong here apart from putting a Daley Thompson's Dickathlon mini-game behind a locked segment of the game.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Who were they being sued by, and why?

This is a brief explanation of how class action lawsuits work, with lots of generalizing.

Basically, the theory of class action law is that when a company is ripping off a customer for a small fee like ten bucks, no one is going to press charges. Class action law allows a lawyer to aggregate all of those claims into one lawsuit. It is very, very expensive to make this kind of lawsuit and if the firm loses, they will be in serious trouble financially. So, for example, when Blockbuster was ripping everyone off with late fees, a law firm decided to take a risk and sue them. They sent out a letter to every single person who had a membership at Blockbuster that basically said: "Hey, if enough people sign this petition, I will rape & pillage Blockbuster for their late fees. In exchange for your signature, I will get you three free rentals while I get 1/3 of the value of reimbursing every single customer they ripped off."

Emotions are usually mixed in these kinds of things. In the case of Blockbuster, they had pissed off enough customers that the firm got the signatures, went to trial, and are now millionaires. It's just a question of whether or not a large population of the people want to see a company get f***ed by a team of lawyers.

In Rockstar's case, a firm jumped on the Hot Coffee mod and did the same thing. Except when they sent out their list, they didn't get enough signatures to justify the lawsuit. This leaves the case in a somewhat awkward situation because technically Rockstar had screwed up, they did not disclose content in their game that was AO, but there were not enough people angry about it to make the case pay out millions like the opposing counsel wanted. So, to get rid of the lawsuit, Rockstar offered them a tiny percentage of what they had asked and in exchange they piss off.

Negotiating the fee and all that, along with how much insurance will cover, just takes a long time.

 

[Nimbus]

[snip]
Negotiating the fee and all that, along with how much insurance will cover, just takes a long time.

That was an excellent explanation!

I still don't get why what they did was illegal, though. (aside from not informing the ESRB about the possibility that someone could create such a mod)

 

[DrScoobs]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

 

[Nimbus]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

That was locked away for that reason.

 

[FallenRainbows]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

Which you had to hack to get into.

 

[paragon1]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

Which you had to hack to get into.

Yeah, this is more of a lesson on actually deleting code instead of doing a quick cheap patchover. Save money in the short term, get a legal buttf**cking in the long run.

 

[dwoo21]

Holy crap that's a lot of money but then again its a sex mini-game and that's really uncalled for out of game developers so i hoped they learned there lesson

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

Which you had to hack to get into.

Which people, of course, are completely incapable of doing. They intentionally hid it from the ratings board.

 

[FallenRainbows]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

Which you had to hack to get into.

Which people, of course, are completely incapable of doing. They intentionally hid it from the ratings board.

They didn't know it was there, someone messed up and cut corners and just deleted getting to it, rather than deleting the entire code itself. They didn't hide it.They didn't think it could be found. And besides what 16 year old hasn't seen sex? A lot have already had it at that point. Alexander, the film is a 15 or a 16 and that has full nudity sex scene in it. And like someone said, nobody was actually angry about it.

 

[Bigeyez]

That's ridiculous. Didn't you have to hack the game, in order to even access the hot coffee stuff?

Yes. The whole "scandal" was bullshit. The mini-game was buried in the code and could only be accessed by a mod of the games code.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

... And thus I gain more reasons to hate humanity and their whiny nonsense.

 

[achilleas.k]

I guess it came down to what defines the term "the game" which you're selling. Is it the compiled code in its entirety? If that's the case then the sex is part of it. Is only the accessible part considered the game and anything else can't be rated? In that case it's not.
My concerns with this story were never whether it's illegal however. Laws are, more often than not, thin black lines set at an arbitrary point within "the grey area". I was always fascinated at this story about how scared western cultures are about sex, especially when it's contrasted against stealing, killing and trafficing drugs.
But that's another story and I don't think this is the time or place to go into it.

 

[andrat]

and cencorship wins again... -_-

This is the first time I have ever, ever been on the conservative side of the argument, but it was AO (18+) content in an M (16+) game.

Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons of age 17 and older.

As opposed to the stricter AO rating:

Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older.

 

[Steve Dark]

More than that, I'm positive it's a load off of Take-Two's bank account: the settlement amounted to a hefty $20,115,000 that will be placed in a fund for the "benefit of class members."

Three things: Who are the Class members? How do they justify getting the benefit of $20 mil? And how do I get membership for my free money?