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Hackers Uncensor Manhunt 2

Posted by Zonk on Thu Nov 01, 2007 09:49 AM
from the i-have-a-feeling-the-esrb-may-have-something-to-say-here dept.
Censorship Entertainment Games
Less than 24 hours after the release of Manhunt 2, you can already play the full and uncensored version thanks to some enterprising hackers. The news for Rockstar is just ... bad: "The game has been censored in the US in order for it to receive an M rating - and therefore a release - rather than the original AO rating it was given by the ESRB. The illegal exploit of the original PSP code indicates that the scenes that were cut in order to secure an M rating were not removed from the full game, rather disabled, much like the Hot Coffee mini-games in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." This is also exactly what prompted the re-rating of Oblivion and Halo 2 for the PC. We should expect to see an ESRB response to this very soon, then.
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[+] ESRB Changes Oblivion's Rating to 'Mature' 282 comments
kukyfrope writes "Perhaps reacting based on the debacle that was the 'Hot Coffee' scandal, the ESRB today changed the rating on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from Teen to Mature. From the article: 'The content causing the ESRB to change the rating involves more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating, as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters,' said the ESRB in a release."
[+] Take-Two Confirms PSP Hack, Snubs Devs 35 comments
Gamasutra reports that Take-Two Entertainment, Rockstar's publisher, has confirmed the existence of uncensored Manhunt 2 versions available online. They defend themselves, in their initial statement, by pointing out you need a modded PSP in order to play the purposefully-hidden content. Meanwhile, the game news site also notes that Take-Two/Rockstar hasn't done a very good job of giving credit where credit is due when it comes to the development of their ultra-violent title. "Jurie Horneman, who was one of the producers on the title before Rockstar Vienna was closed and development on the game was moved to Rockstar London, where it was completed, commented in a detailed weblog post that he '...intends to correct an inaccuracy in the game's credits, namely the over 55 missing Rockstar Vienna employees who worked on the game from January 2004 until the studio was closed down on May 11th 2006.'" Update: 11/02 19:52 GMT by Z :An ESRB investigation has cleared Rockstar of involvement with the hacked AO version of the game. IE: The AO content is not an element on the PSP disc. Title of post changed to reflect that.
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  • When will they ever learn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davidwr (791652) on Thursday November 01 2007, @09:53AM (#21196731) Homepage Journal
    You wait until AFTER the game has been out a week or two before posting the AO-hack.
    • I wish I didn't know that the illegal hack is going to fuck Rockstar again...
      • So is this hackable manhunt release going to increase in value? Had I known marvel vs capcom2 would be like $70 now, I would have bought 20 copies.
        • Grab it now, because they're going to patch this one up VERY quickly, likely in the form of a mandatory PSP upgrade.
          • Mandatory PSP upgrade? Tell me that was a poor attempt at sarcasm, please! For starters I wonder how a 3rd party software company would get Sony to do that - even if it were possible. Who runs Sony firmware anyway?

  • Rockstar, you fscking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

    by p0tat03 (985078) on Thursday November 01 2007, @09:59AM (#21196827)

    Didn't you people learn *anything* from the Hot Coffee debacle? Heck, the Hot Coffee components of San Andreas weren't even *well publicized* and people s till managed to dig it up. What did you THINK was going to happen? You've already got congress breathing down the necks of the entire industry and STILL you think layering gruesome, brutal scenes that would have resulted in a higher rating over a simple... screen flash?

    I realize this shouldn't be as big of an issue, society and violence, blah blah, but the truth remains that the industry remains under tight scrutiny, and Rockstar isn't doing anybody any favours.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmaDaden (794446)

      Didn't you people learn *anything* from the Hot Coffee debacle?
      Oh hell yes they did. They basically were able to release an AO game with a M rating. So they got the game out the door on most systems AND did not have to actually cut anything out because they knew the hacking community would find it. I bet the everyone but the legal department is laughing their ass off over at Rockstar right now.

    • Re:Rockstar, you fscking idiots (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jeks (68) * on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:22AM (#21197239)
      Can we be so sure this is really an accident. They have been down this road before and must have learned the implications of it. Rockstar has some of the most brilliant people working for them. Are they really run by a bunch of idiots? I find that hard to believe.

      Nothing pisses me off more than conspiracy theorists, but here goes. Is it just me, or could this have been done on purpose? Maybe simply to maintain their "we don't give a f*ck" public image in anticipation for greater platform releases.

      Do ratings really affect end sales results? Most kids are determined enough to get their hands on what they want anyway, ratings or not, even if they have to go behind someone's back (naturally their parents). I sure know I was, even though there were no consoles back then, there were video tapes of magical events (rated and censored dare I say, here in Sweden) where real fighters squared off. I think the winner more often than not was named Bruce Lee.

      • Re:Rockstar, you fscking idiots (Score:4, Interesting)

        by p0tat03 (985078) on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:37AM (#21197459)

        Oh, I have no doubt Rockstar will benefit from this. Manhunt sales will jump, and achieve sales far better than it deserves (almost all reviews have universally judged it mediocre at best). It's the blatant disregard for the rest of the industry that pisses me off. This is the type of irresponsible "me" thinking that will get this industry censored by the guys on the hill. The *rest* of us are fine releasing M games, and AO games, and T games, and E games, why does Rockstar deliberately have to generate the media frenzy and even FURTHER undermine the authority of the ESRB?

        • Nasty as it is, Rockstar is a business with with its own interests. It only really cares about #1.

        • You don't know what you are talking about. Night Trap [wikipedia.org] proves beyond all doubt that certain members of congress are card carrying members of the Taliban who wish to censor everything. You ever played Night Trap? If you didn't change anything except making the girls a few years younger, it probably would've been aired on Nickelodeon's "Are you afraid of the dark" series. The "violence" and "sex" in that video game are G-rated at most.

          The attacks on video game "violence" and such have nothing to do with any

      • "Rockstar has some of the most brilliant people working for them. Are they really run by a bunch of idiots? I find that hard to believe."

        having dealt with their parent company on several occasions, I would postulate you put way too much faith in their abilities.
    • I think Rockstar though nobody would think they'd be stupid enough to risk another Hot Coffee so nobody would even bother looking for it.

    • Re:Rockstar, you fscking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist (166417) on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:47AM (#21197643)
      You have to understand that it's near impossible to redo half of a game after it's gone gold. Unless you want to push the release back another half year.

      So the choice was, either to do a half assed attempt to shove it out the door or back to the drawing board. Question for 200: Which route will the average game company take? Take into consideration that it's November and the XMas sales are at stake.

      • A week at most, and this is from someone who's had experience developing games (albeit indie, but the same rules apply). Rockstar covered up the brutal parts with screen overlays, which was well enough, all they had to do was change the animation to something more benign during this "invisible" period. Heck, it's something so simple it could've been done in Maya, 3dsmax, or whichever tool they were using for animation. NO CODE CHANGES REQUIRED. You can do all of this in a day (a couple hours with multiple p

        • uh what? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by SirSlud (67381)
          How hard is it to either completely yank the naughty bits or replace them with functionally-identical bits

          You can't just open the binary in a text editor and zero-out the bits that are the surrounded by that 'im naughty' glow. You need to change the all the associated assets (the animations) remove all offending particle effects, yadda yadda. It's not a walk in the park. You've just worked in crunch mode for however many months to make sure the game never crashes, and suddenly, you're ripping out assets, re

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by XenoPhage (242134)
      From what I can tell the "hack" in this case requires a homebrew PSP (legality questioned), and ISO of the games (legality questioned) and the modification of a few configuration files (not something normally possible on a console) ... Hidden content is all over the place, in DVDs, games, business applications, etc. If it takes extraordinary means to get to it, something that technically shouldn't be possible if the device it's played on is used properly, how is that the fault of the developer?

      Sure, they

      • Sure, they left the content in. But realize that what they did to the scenes was "fuzz" them over with odd camera angles and filters. You need the scenes there in order to filter them..
        If this game gets re-rated because the content was only blurred and the objectionable content was still on the disk, this would give Jack Thompson the reload of ammo he needs to go after The Sims and its pixelated nudity.
        • And getting a view of the non-pixelated nudity in The Sims was so easy anyone could do it. It's really surprising nothing ever came of that.
    • "I realize this shouldn't be as big of an issue, society and violence, blah blah, but the truth remains that the industry remains under tight scrutiny, and Rockstar isn't doing anybody any favours."

      Rockstar was faced with an injustice in the first place. Cry me a fucking river.

  • Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sciros (986030) on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:00AM (#21196845) Journal
    The re-rating of Oblivion was insanely stupid. Ooh, you can mod it to include some nudity. Okay.. you can MOD a ton of games to include whatever you want! That doesn't change the fact that unless you go in changing things as (or via) a third party, the game remains the same as when it was originally rated by the ESRB.

    In all of these cases, the rating should not change. A third party mod can add content, unlock content that otherwise cannot be accessed, etc. I don't see any logical, practical reason why in one case the rating shouldn't change and in another it should. Really, in all cases it shouldn't.
    • What we need is for hackers to spend some time modding the Veggie Tales games, or Bible Adventure...
      • I think you can use a Wolf3D level editor to mod the full DOS version of Super 3D Noah's Ark...

        *runs*

        -uso.
    • This brings up a point and gives me a great idea. Why don't we get people to make nude patches for Barbie Pony Princess (fake game, but you know what I mean...some E game targeted at kids)? Then get the media to cover it and make them reclassify Barbie as Mature :)

      • Why don't we get people to make nude patches for Barbie Pony Princess (fake game, but you know what I mean...some E game targeted at kids)?

        There is "Barbie Horse Adventures", now with two games in the franchise: Wild Horse Rescue and Mystery Ride. They were rated E. (X-Play rated the first one as a "game you should never play".)

        Question is, should the nude mod for Barbie still make her "smooth around the bend", making her just as age-appropriate as the dolls, or make her anatomically correct?

        • Re:Stupid (Score:5, Funny)

          by pla (258480) on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:45AM (#21197597) Journal
          If the nude textures were already on the disc,

          Of course they already exist on the disc... Mattel just hid them under the ordinary textures using one-time pad encryption.

          We just need to find the decryption key that restores them to their original AO-rated glory.
    • This is for the chilllldruuuun. Logic doesn't enter into it.

    • Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee (775178) on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:37AM (#21197473) Homepage
      I played Drawn To Life (http://www.thq.com/games/gameinfo.php?id=1283) with a naked main character. Not to mention the kind of depraved stuff I drew as "clouds". ESRB should rate Drawn to Life AO.
    • I think it's a gray area when the content is actually there but locked. Sure, adding content (a la Oblivion mods) shouldn't change the rating, but if there's a cutscene included with the game that's "disabled" then it's still technically part of the content included in the purchase of the game.

      Honestly, game companies (especially Rockstar!) ought to know better by now. It shouldn't be that hard to replace a video or audio file with a stub, or null out some game-rendered cutscene script, even at the last min
      • Ehh, it could be a PITA.

        If the game has already gone gold, they would be looking at a huge loss to re-package a new CD. Especially if the game is designed to call home so that the disabling could be enacted after the purchase with out any significant overhead.

        Even if the game hasn't gone gold, if they still intend to ship both an AO and M rated version, having all the data on 1 image, and just flipping an enabled switch is likely cheaper for production costs.

        But yeah, you would think that these guys, having
    • Erh... one question, because I'm not familiar with Oblivion, was the nudity part of the game and was "dressed", or was it a complete third party implementation?

      I see this as a big difference. When it's part of the game, just hidden to get an agreeable rating, the game company does have some liability. If it's completely third party then yes, I agree, 100% pure bullshit to rerate.
      • Partial nudity (not well done) was already there because the clothing was basically laid over it. But without making a mod, getting at that nudity was not possible.

        Still, I don't really see how a company should have a game rating change by having locked content that cannot be accessed without a 3rd party effort. It's not "part of the game" from a practical standpoint. And ratings are *supposed* to be about practicality. (Granted they aren't; they're inconsistent and nonsensical BS, but that's not the point
    • The point is not that a piece of software can be mod'ed. The problem with the game is that the content is included but disabled. While in some ways I think it's stupid to make a distinction, I also think it's stupid that the company is being so lazy as to not product a finished product solely in the form expected.

      Think of it this way: Child porn is legal in some parts of the world. A magazine is printed that contains it and some company decides that people in the US might want to read everything save the

      • Re:Not really the issue (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Sciros (986030) on Thursday November 01 2007, @11:48AM (#21198561) Journal
        Your analogy to the magazine is way off, though. Folding over pages doesn't make them unavailable, heh, even if they're glued shut. Besides, the point isn't about accessibility per se (a high difficulty mode-related unlock can be just as inaccessible as outright disabling content from an effort-related standpoint), as much as it is a question of *what exactly is being rated.* Is it the game you will be playing? or is it the game you could potentially be playing if you use 3rd party apps to mess with the content in some fashion?

        I'm not defending Rockstar's decision necessarily, but I'm certainly not criticizing it and I am definitely criticizing the ESRB's usual reaction to these situations.
    • Where do you draw the line?

      some people would argue that it shipped on the disc, they should be responcible for it. How do you counter that? If they didnt want it to show, they should have removed it.

      I write code. I undersand how it works. There are many times where I will comment out something and never use it. Or just disable functionality instead of removing it. But alot of people have no clue.

      Its just another technilogical issue that someone with no understanding about will try to relate it to someth
      • Hm... but that's not the point! Changing a game rating from "M" to "AO" or from "T" to "M" isn't the equivalent of "placing responsibility" on Rockstar for the content. Rockstar could have released a separate free download that adds crazy levels of gore, explicit sex, and whatever else they feel like and though they would be 100% responsible for it, it wouldn't change the fact that the content of the game that you will be subject to if you play it out-of-the-box is (supposedly) appropriate for some particul

      • Ratings aren't for "you", they're for parents. From the parents' point of view, it's a moot point whether content is shipped unlocked or trivially locked.

        Why, because everyone who raises children is an irresponsible retard who doesn't know the difference between using something out-of-the-box and using it with after-market mods? Besides the fact that ratings are for people in general, not just parents, what does it matter if something is "trivially" locked as opposed to "non-trivially"? And who decides the triviality? The ESRB?

  • Game play experience may change once game is online. I always laughed seeing that in games like Animal Crossing. But, MODs could be seen under that blanket warning. Once a game is live and online there's always going to be some odd way to view it... Ever been T-Bagged in a Halo match or downloaded a new item skin for Elder Scrolls?

    • Game play experience may change once game is online. I always laughed seeing that in games like Animal Crossing.

      That's because you eventually find players like Chester@Picken(2620-8829-0820) who have gone to Able Sisters and designed the equivalent of a French Connection logo T-shirt. Other players have even taught [metro.co.uk] their spoon-speaking [tvtropes.org] neighbors to swear.

  • The weird thing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by naam00 (1145163) on Thursday November 01 2007, @10:14AM (#21197105)
    ...well to me at least, is that the edited scenes (yes with overstated screenjarring during the more brutal moments) are actually more disturbing to watch (in a good way) than watching the same things happening in clearly visible low-poly animation. The power of suggestion at play.

    Weird in the sense that the people with their underwear in a knot over this manhunt business are still going to cry out over these less disturbing and plainly silly rendering resources being on disk, and the fact that hackers have removed the elements that make the scene more chilling.

    But I guess they will want to blow off no matter what the game actually looks like.

    http://gamevideos.com/video/id/15918 [gamevideos.com]
    • No kidding -- watching that video, it actually doesn't look like they're obscuring much at all. This is CLEARLY an AO title, and I really wish that they'd take the fight to get the console makers to allow AO titles rather than further muddle the M rating. I mean shit, The Longest Journey has an M rating, and it's a game I'd let any kid play, since the worst thing in it is the occasional language.

    • Old movies play on that too, and were more successful than those gore movies of today. Psycho still gives me more thrills than any bloodfest that drips red goo on the floor unter my TV.

      The human mind comes up with more horrible ideas than the most graphic display could show. For reference, play Call of Cthulhu with my GM. I can stomach any horror movie, but when he starts describing what's going on and his cat jumps onto your lap, you piss your pants.
  • Seriously, TFA refers to it as an illegal exploit.

    No no. It's merely against the license agreement, and is at the most unlawful.

  • The message is clear: "BUY NOW! SUPPLIES ARE RUNNING OUT (or forced to run out soon)!"

    If anything, this will push the sales for as long as it's possible. And, well, I'd buy it now for one reason: Soon you can sell them for rather good money on EBay.

  • Hey watchdogs! (Score:3, Funny)

    by entmike (469980) on Thursday November 01 2007, @11:50AM (#21198585) Homepage
    You may want to contact Adobe! There is a feature in their "Photoshop" program that will allow you to create naked celebrities! This product is available for Our Children to purchase with no age restrictions.

  • This may be a stupid question, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deceptin00b (1182903) on Thursday November 01 2007, @01:20PM (#21199999)
    There are movies that have more than one DVD for them: the official one rated by the MPAA and the unrated version that has everything. Why not make games that way? The ESRB rated version, then an unrated version for those of us that have pubic hair?
    • But it's boring! Who cares if it's 'heavily adult'? Okay maybe this version is better than the original (which I bought because of all the fuss, then found it to be very BORING! and repetetive..), but due to the tricks they're employing again to make people buy it, I doubt it.

      I'll still be getting GTA IV though, no matter what other crap happens between now and then, unless for some reason they make it X-Box 360 only, the day I buy a Microsoft console is the day that Steve Ballmer starts caring about peo

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by somersault (912633)
          No, but PCs had been a personal hate of mine for a long time as a kid when I used Macs and Amigas, then when I learned of Linux I realised it was just Microsoft that were making the platform a puddle of piss. I have a Wii and a DS (where again previously I was never a big fan of Nintendo until recently when they started making products that I actually find interesting and cool). While a company should have making money as one of its goals, it will usually perform better in that regards if it actually does i

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