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Take Two Shareholders to sue over Hot Coffee

Posted by Zonk on Sat Feb 18, 2006 05:37 PM
from the controversy-is-good-fo-business dept.
Government The Courts Entertainment Games News
casualsax3 writes "Take Two, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is facing more legal action over the game. Separately, two law firms have filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of shareholders who they say lost money due to the controversy about the game. This comes right on the heels of news that the Sex Workers Outreach Program is calling for a boycott of the game."
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[+] Prostitutes Call for a Ban on GTA 478 comments
d writes "Gamespot has an article about an association of prostitutes protesting the GTA games. Apparently, the sex workers of the Sex Workers Outreach Project aren't too happy about their ingame counterparts being treated violently in the GTA games. They note that the games are a bad influence on children, and might encourage rape and violent behavior towards prostitutes in real life."
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Take Two Shareholders to sue over Hot Coffee 25 Comments More /

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  • Relax! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zardus (464755) <Zardus@nbwrpg.com> on Saturday February 18 2006, @05:41PM (#14751509) Homepage Journal
    The shareholders should get together with the Sex Workers Outreach Program and get some relaxation time in!

  • The problem is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thegrassyknowl (762218) on Saturday February 18 2006, @05:43PM (#14751523)
    The share holders are in dire need of the sex workers union. Anyone who is going to use this as an excuse to sue is fucking crazy. Hot Coffee didn't make them lose money. It publicised the game to a lot more people than ever before. I know people who paid for a copy to just see that extra bit.

    Americans are so fucking mad
    • Some stores, that already were weary about carrying GTA titles, pulled GTA from their shelves.

      You can't sell games if no one can buy them.

      • Re:wrong... (Score:4, Informative)

        by the-amazing-blob (917722) on Saturday February 18 2006, @06:16PM (#14751713) Journal
        It also made the ignorant section (aka majority) of the public aware of the ratings system, and the fact that those little black and white boxes mean something. Some parents began checking to see what title their child wanted, and what the rating was. Decrease in sales from the fact that the market of 12 year olds decreased.
    • We're not mad, our government is.

  • The sad thing here is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2006, @05:47PM (#14751547)
    It's really clearly starting to look to me like the biggest mistake Take Two made with the hot coffee incident was admitting fault. If they'd just stood up and said "screw you, the content isn't in the game unless you mod it, and even after you mod it it's less extreme than content that already exists in other M games", fought the opportunistic politicians trying to exploit them, and fought the ESRB AO rating, they'd have come out of this much better. They'd have made a lot of enemies but at least they'd have managed to get some damage control out of it and at least that's something, the response they ultimately chose had no positive side effects at all.
    • If they'd just stood up and said "screw you, the content isn't in the game unless you mod it, and even after you mod it it's less extreme than content that already exists in other M games"

      How is that different to admitting fault?

    • They'd have made a lot of enemies

      Take Two had all the enemies it could stand.

      It says something when upstate New York soccer moms, the Haitian poor of Miami, Las Vegas prostitutes and center-right politicians everywhere unite in a common cause.

      Take Two tried damage control.
      Then HC was found embedded in the console ports of the game...

    • Re:The sad thing here is (Score:5, Insightful)

      by supabeast! (84658) on Saturday February 18 2006, @06:57PM (#14751911)
      What you're clearly missing here is that Take-Two/Rockstar never had any chance at controlling this and coming out on top. It didn't matter what Take-Two/Rockstar said in their own defense, because this entire story exists because the American news media serves mainly to titilate its audience with twisted facts taken out of context followed by a lot of outright lies. And nobody was ever going to come to Take-Two/Rockstar's aid, because they're just a bunch of rich white nerds making games for a living, they don't fit into popular concepts of victims needing defense.

      Take-Two/Rockstar are just as much a victim of America's depraved acceptance of a media that's little better than the state-controlled media of facist regimes than it is the developer's own stupidity.

      • What you're clearly missing here is that Take-Two/Rockstar never had any chance at controlling this and coming out on top. It didn't matter what Take-Two/Rockstar said in their own defense, because this entire story exists because the American news media serves mainly to titilate its audience with twisted facts taken out of context followed by a lot of outright lies

        Actually, they do - all they need to create is a bounty where the first person to produce said sex scene in an unmodified game gets a prize (e

        • The main point is that it is impossible to access the mini-game through any mechanism provided by the game as distributed - you need to either modify the game or the save file. It's not something you can stumble across accidentally. Unless you are intentionally looking for it, you'll never see it.

          If you are intentionally looking for such things, it's vastly easier to find something racier on the net than what is effectively a Ken and Barbie doll suggestively animated. Regardless of any wrongdoing, the w

    • No. The biggest mistake they made was allowing the Hot Coffee content in the game in the first place. There are many software tools which let you keep track of what code made it into the game, when it got there, who put it there, what's the test case, etc. I do this all the fucking time-- it's not simple, but it ain't rocket science.

      If they did proper auditing they would have seen this mysterious chunk of data or code and could have removed it before shipping a hundred thousand units.

  • Jack Thompson must be happy (Score:3, Funny)

    by technoextreme (885694) on Saturday February 18 2006, @06:04PM (#14751628)
    Didn't he buy stock in Take Two? Im sure his name is right on the top of both suits.
  • GET OVER IT.
    With or without the help of a sex worker.
  • I'm not fond of gratitous sex and killing in video games. If you have to have it, fine, but the game should have some sort of warning on the front. Maybe "M" for mature? This code would prevent minors from buying the game, similar to "R" rated movies that contain sex/killing/raping/cussing.

    Wait, they already have this "M" label?

    Where is the problem? Either "M" games are getting rated "T", which is not the case here, or Wal-Mart, EB Games, etc are not enforcing the rating when they sell. Hardly a TakeTwo pro

    • Wait, they already have this "M" label? Where is the problem?

      There's a big difference between a very mild M (e.g. Forsaken 64, which had no sex, no dialogue to speak of, and no more violence than T-rated Goldeneye 007) and an extreme M (the cleaned up version of GTA: San Andreas). Trouble is that the explanation of this difference is hid on the back of the box, which is behind glass.

  • So.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse (789240) on Saturday February 18 2006, @06:24PM (#14751755) Journal
    So you sue a company, bring up more press about it and cost them money on lawyers... because they lost you money?

    This is going to cost them even more money. The other share holders should sue them for this.
    • Yeah, that about sums it up. I would only add, that suing a company's who's stock you own is exactly like shooting yourself in the foot. The company may fire the programmers, then their next game may not be such a big seller, the stock tanks and the shareholders lose *more* money.

      In the interests of poetic justice, any settlement the company makes with the shareholders ought to be in the form of more shares... Imagine taking *that* for a spin through the courts if/when the stock takes a hit: "Boo hoo, t

  • Grand Theft Auto has made millions for these people. You don't get points for beating up prostitutes any more than you get points for beating up anybody else, in the form of cash dropped. The missions (which never seem to involve killing hookers) reward much more richly. The game encourages the forming of relationships, and protecting girls, for which, again, you will get many more rewards. So please explain why this game, above others, in it's unmodded retail form, upsets prostitutes and shareholders?
    • So please explain why this game, above others, in it's unmodded retail form, upsets prostitutes and shareholders?

      Because prostitutes and shareholders will do anything for a quick buck.

  • Aw, diddums (Score:4, Insightful)

    by payndz (589033) on Saturday February 18 2006, @07:30PM (#14752060)
    Did the poor widdle shareholders lose money when they thought all they could do was win, win, win?

    What happened to 'the value of shares may go down as well as up', or didn't they read the small print? Boo hoo. The stock market is basically upmarket gambling. They gambled, and they lost. Cry me a river.

  • Who ever heard of this anyway? Suing a company because their coffee is too hot? Coffee is supposed to be hot.

    Yeah, but Jackie says the top was faulty

    ref: seinfeld.
  • two law firms have filed class-action lawsuits

    Lawyers screw people for money.
    Prostitutes screw people for money.

    If this keeps up, Take-Two is going to be sued by politicians next.

  • This is just like the McDonald's lawsuit. Sued over hot coffee. So what's the story this time, the Take Two shareholders are whining because the coffee served at the shareholder's meeting is too hot?

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