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

[Supreme Unleaded]

wasnt the hot coffe thing a mod made by a gamer, and how does it take this long, didnt this thing start in like 04.

 

[Harbinger_]

If you had to hack the game to get to it I don't think it's something that little kids would probably find. "Usually"

 

[PxDn Ninja]

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.

Ok, I gotta chime in on this as I am a developer for the industry and this actually really pissed me off back when it occurred.

With the ESRB (at the time), when you submitted a game, you had a HUGE questionnaire to fill out explaining what all would be in the game for the end user to play, as well as image and video clips showing the best and worst of what was offered.

With what RockStar did, they submitted exactly that. The end user has to accept the EULA with software when they play it, which includes a clause stating that they will not modify the software and all that (special cases are pointed out in the case of games with level editors). The point is, the game is only to be rated on what the player can access PER NORMAL GAMEPLAY.

When this locked out (and incomplete) minigame was found via hacking, I agree that RockStar messed up and should have just deleted the code and assets from the disk instead of a simple #define to bypass it, however the ESRB should not have rerated the title to AO based on data that had to be modified outside of the scope of the EULA.

In the end, this settlement will teach RockStar to take proper care of their codebase, but I have always sided against the ESRB on the issue of the rerating of the title.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Man, talk about OLD...

...and pointless.

I mean, except for the media who found another item to tackle the games industry with, did anyone really care?

 

[Halfbreed13]

Let us hope god of war 3 stays under the radar of these morons

 

[Low Key]

So they basically got sued because the content was for 18+ gamers, but instead it was labelled for 17+ gamers? Oh the humanity!!!!

It's a good thing Take Two had continuances or someone might still actually care.

 

[KapnKerfuffle]

$20,000,000 for two polygon characters fucking.

 

[Dioxide20]

Wow this was still going on? Thats stupid, and people could only access it through modding the game on the PC, you couldn't do it anywhere else.

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

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.

Ridiculous, I realize allot of Class Action suits are a reasonable and necessary mechanism to be able to hold big business in check, but this is a gross miscarriage of justice.

Nah, I'd say this is pretty far froma miscarriage of justice. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of GTA, but that content should not have been in there. I hope they learnt their lesson.

Seriously though, I thought they had resolved this ages ago, jeez.

 

[andrat]

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.

Ridiculous, I realize allot of Class Action suits are a reasonable and necessary mechanism to be able to hold big business in check, but this is a gross miscarriage of justice.

Nah, I'd say this is pretty far froma miscarriage of justice. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of GTA, but that content should not have been in there. I hope they learnt their lesson.

Seriously though, I thought they had resolved this ages ago, jeez.

Yeah. I thought this had been dealt with a LONG time ago. Speaking of which, time for some hot coffee.

 

[AceDiamond]

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.

Ridiculous, I realize allot of Class Action suits are a reasonable and necessary mechanism to be able to hold big business in check, but this is a gross miscarriage of justice.

Nah, I'd say this is pretty far froma miscarriage of justice. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of GTA, but that content should not have been in there. I hope they learnt their lesson.

Seriously though, I thought they had resolved this ages ago, jeez.

You do realize that, under this precedent, people could retroactively sue Sega for false advertisement because of the Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic 2 being content still on the catridge's ROM but not in the final game itself, despite it being featured in advertisements? That's exactly what this is like, only with a ratings/morality issue involved. Now I don't know why they left it on there, maybe they couldn't remove it easily before the deadline, but I do not think they should be held responsible for hackers discovering it. That would be like holding a webmaster responsible for hackers getting onto his site and replacing everything with a giant picture of Goatse or something.

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

That would be like holding a webmaster responsible for hackers getting onto his site and replacing everything with a giant picture of Goatse or something.

Except it wouldn't be the same thing. At all.

The only way that comparison would be apt is if webmaster (who?) already had a picture of goatse on their site, albeit hidden, and the only thing the hackers had to do was make it visible, in which case, yes, they should be held responsible.

Even then though, that's an internet website, and what we're talking about is an age-certified game, so it ain't that similar.

 

[Simalacrum]

Wait what? This came completely out of the blue for me, I was never even aware that Take Two were involved in such a expensive lawsuit.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

$20,000,000 for two polygon characters fucking.

Well, do keep in mind the firm only got 5 million, most of which was pissed away by writing letters to customers who used them to fill up their garbage can. The expense of this kind of lawsuit is insane because you have to contact everyone who bought the game. The fifteen million will prolly not be claimed and it will just go back to the insurance company.

Seriously. The firm who started this lawsuit is probably just breaking even.

 

[Ph33nix]

wow that seams ridiculous 20 mil for that? plus it required a mod to activate, and was fully clothed, and GOd of war did it and they didn;t get in trouble...

 

[Pendragon9]

They should put Hot coffee in every game just to make the people more angry.

CENSORSHIP IS WRONG, PEOPLE. >

 

[AceDiamond]

That would be like holding a webmaster responsible for hackers getting onto his site and replacing everything with a giant picture of Goatse or something.

Except it wouldn't be the same thing. At all.

The only way that comparison would be apt is if webmaster (who?) already had a picture of goatse on their site, albeit hidden, and the only thing the hackers had to do was make it visible, in which case, yes, they should be held responsible.

Even then though, that's an internet website, and what we're talking about is an age-certified game, so it ain't that similar.

Meh, I admit that was a stretch but the problem is the US is a country that has had people break into houses, injure themselves in the process of robbing the place, sue the homeowner, and win. Anything is possible (unfortunately) as long as you have precedent. And now people do. Hey how abouts Atari go and sue Warren Robinette for wasting precious catridge space putting an easter egg in Adventure? Well they wouldn't do that, because that's friggin silly.

 

[falcon1985]

$20,000,000 for two polygon characters fucking.

Well if they got offended by polyporn, i guess Mass Effect is next on the choppingboard. Then again, you had the option of hot, steamy, blue alien booty, something these people wouldn't understand anyway.