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GTA: San Andreas to be Re-Released Next Week 272

Posted by samzenpus from the now-suitable-for-children dept.
404Ender writes "According to GameStop and EB, the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will finally be re-released without the controversial "Hot Coffee" content and clean of anything that might demand an AO rating. Will this be the first game in a series of many to come that will be pulled off the market to be changed due to questionable content? How long before a Hot Coffee replacement mod is produced?"
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GTA: San Andreas to be Re-Released Next Week More

GTA: San Andreas to be Re-Released Next Week

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  • OK... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    so can someone get me a coffee, please?

  • GTA: Old England released (Score:5, Funny)

    by HugePedlar ( 900427 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:12AM (#13508056) Homepage
    "Warm Tea" mod. Controversy ensues.
    • Don't give them any ideas, for most other games releasing the same game with a different city would be considered an "expansion pack".
      • If I remember rightly, for the GTA: London game, everything bar the engine was changed - missions, cars, maps, etc - are you seriously suggesting that unless you change the underlying game engine (or even use a completely different one) it's not a different game?

        I'm an avid Rockstar entheusiast, I own every single GTA game that's been released and quite a bit of the rest of their catalogue too, and I really don't see your point - they dont just change the city, they change *the entire game* apart from the

  • So it'll be an empty box then... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by laptop006 ( 37721 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:12AM (#13508061) Homepage Journal
    Otherwise how will it be "clean of anything that might demand an AO rating"?

  • Maddox said it best... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zone-MR ( 631588 ) * <slashdot@NoSPam.zone-mr.net> on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:13AM (#13508066) Homepage
    Read his page [thebestpag...iverse.net] on the hot coffee mod...

    Thank God. I'll be the first person to download and patch my PC version of "Grand Theft Auto." I want to shoot people in the face, bang prostitutes, traffic drugs, steal cars, and terrorize police officers without this filthy smut in my game.

    • Re:Maddox said it best... (Score:5, Funny)

      by FauxPasIII ( 75900 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @09:03AM (#13508398)
      > I want to shoot people in the face, bang prostitutes, traffic drugs, steal cars, and
      > terrorize police officers without this filthy smut in my game.

      -nod- Mass murder, destruction of property, robbery and prostitution are one thing (er... four), but showing
      C.J. having consensual sex with his girlfriend? Dear God, man, there are CHILDREN playing this game !

    • Re:Maddox said it best... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @09:09AM (#13508455)
      I just want to know where I can still get the origional. I've never cared about GTA before, but now that there's content that's forbiden, I must find a way to get it.

      Let me know when you find something. I'll be surfing for hot nude teens while waiting.

      TW
      • try ordering a copy from the UK, the seemingly only sane country to still be selling the original version. And you yanks call us brits prude!
      • I picked up my copy at Best Buy during the controversy but before the rerating. The price tag obscured the ESRB rating on the front of the box.

        The original distributor of the Hot Coffee mod has withdrawn it from his site. You have to get it from others now and hope you're not also installing malware.

        GTA:SA now has a patch available for the PC version that fixes some bugs and blocks the Hot Coffee mod. I haven't heard of anyone unbundling the patch to apply the bug fixes and not the mod blocker.

        The UK ver
    • The controversy isn't just about adding a little sex to an already atrociously violent game, it's about that sex slipping past the review board. The industry is desparte to stay self regulated and stuff like this doesn't help. That said this isn't that big a deal, anyone remember the Roger Rabbit laserdisc fiasco?

  • hrm.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by xao gypsie ( 641755 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:14AM (#13508074)
    How long before a Hot Coffee replacement mod is produced?

    for computers, I would say roughly 30 seconds.

  • This could lead to... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by silasthehobbit ( 626391 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:14AM (#13508075)
    Them then re-releasing the Hot Coffee version as a special adult-only don't-have-to-hack-the-code release (which I'm guessing some people would buy) and making MORE money from this. Which would be exactly the opposite that the original complainants were attempting to achieve, no?

  • Moot point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:15AM (#13508081) Homepage
    Um, I don't know about you guys, but as I see it GTA is not something suitable for kids regardles off the amount of booty shown.

    Any game with that amount of violence should be adults only. It's funny as hell, but it really does demand a mature mind... IMHO anyways.

    • Re:Moot point? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Karaman ( 873136 )
      Well, it depends on the mind of the kid. Some of them are well too matured for their age and already know that killing a cop is something you do in a computer game only, not in real life :)
    • That is the whole point I think come on the game was already rated for 17+ persons!! so what is the freaking difference if a 17.5 guy see a sexual relation simulation against a 18???? that is stupid if the game was rated for people under 16 or something I will agree... but how just ask any of the population between 17 and 18 years old if they have seen a pornographic movie and I am really sure more than the 80% have!
  • Finally. No more distractions from sex and pr0n. More time for pure slaughter and massacres of innocent bystanders. /picz

  • Double standards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Durzel ( 137902 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:18AM (#13508095) Homepage
    The crazy thing about GTA:SA is that speaks volumes about the differences in cultures between the US and other countries.

    For example, here in the UK, GTA:SA - and its predecessors - got an 18 rating straight off the bat. That's the highest rating ELSPA (The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, equivalent to your ESRB/IEMA) gives to video games over here. I guess its functionally equivalent to your AO rating.

    Although I'm not an expert on classifications I'm sure it earnt its 18 rating here due to the strong content - extreme violence, grand theft auto, prostitution and so on. The fact that some time down the line a hidden pixellated simulated sex mode was unlocked was just icing on the cake - the game was already strictly limited to adults anyway.

    I am presuming therefore that your M (17+) rating is equivalent to our 15 rating, which presumably means you are quite happy for 15 year old American youths to play out scenes where they can mug people, shoot cops, steal cars, use the services of prostitutes and so forth - but God forbid they see some pixellated nudity and crudely simulated sexual acts.

    Will someone please think of the children! (and give them some guys to protect themselves while you're at it)

    • Re:Double standards (Score:5, Funny)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:22AM (#13508121)
      I am presuming therefore that your M (17+) rating is equivalent to our 15 rating, which presumably means you are quite happy for 15 year old American youths to play out scenes where they can mug people, shoot cops, steal cars, use the services of prostitutes and so forth

      Yup. That "17+" clearly stated in there means 15 over on this side of the Atlantic. In fact we subtract two from all positive European integers.

    • Re:Double standards (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Spad ( 470073 )
      Correction, GTA:SA and its predecessors got an 18 rating from the BBFC, not ELSPA. ELSPA ratings are an advisory system, whereas the BBFC ratings are legally binding.

      You'll also notice that nobody seems to really care about the Hot Coffee debacle in the UK anyway - the most we've seen are a few references to the "outrage" in the US and Oz.
      • Another correction is that the ELSPA system was replaced by the pan-European PEGI system quite a while before GTA:SA was released (well, it's nearly pan-European, there are still a few places with their own systems).
    • I am presuming therefore that your M (17+)

      In our defense... you can join the military at 17 in the US. It would also be a little stupid to say "you aren't allowed to see violence in video games, if you want to see that... go to Iraq!" In other words, shoot people with computerized guns: not until 18 .. shoot people with real guns: 17

      • you can join the military at 17 in the US. It would also be a little stupid to say "you aren't allowed to see violence in video games, if you want to see that... go to Iraq!" In other words, shoot people with computerized guns: not until 18 .. shoot people with real guns: 17

        Oh I see, so it's okay to not only pretend to kill people, but actually do it in real life as a profession. But seeing sex depicted in a game? Hell no! That better be for Adults Only!

      • Re:Double standards (Score:3, Insightful)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
        Yeah, ages are all messed up in the United states. If your birthday is in November, you can technically graduate college (in a 4 year program), and be working before you are allowed to start drinking alcohol. (at age 21) Yet you are allowed to vote, at 18. Join the army at 17. Besides what's the difference between M and AO. 1 year. At that rate, they may as well just drop the AO rating, bring M up to 18, and relieve all the confusion.
        • My history teacher back in high-school told me that the "reason" they raised the drinking age back to 21 was because IDs were easy to fake back then and its much easier for a 15 year old to pass for 18 then 21. Given that ID technology has progressed, perhaps its time to lower the age.

          Maybe if it wasn't illegal you could convince college students to have a little sense when it came to consumption.
          • Yeah, right. Have you seen UK universities?

            Cock-Soc (Cocktail Society): Fill a few (clean) dustbins with as much vodka, orange juice lemonade etc as you have in the budget. Then charge £2 a pint. --In Nottingham / Leeds I've actually seen Ambulances queing.

            Bar Crawls: Ottley run starts two miles out of town with 18 bars between you and the city centre. You are supposed to have a pint in each one on the way. Nottingham: the campus 14. There are 14 bars on campus, can you have a pint in each one before
            • Pussies. Last time I was at a kegger (which was admittedly a while ago), they had a tub full of ever-clear and koolaid mix, basically 100% alcohol. $5 at the door, all you can drink (they had regular drinks too).

              Joking aside, I suppose the point of my comment is that there is a sense of "drink as much as you want it doesn't matter" during the college years.

              Perhaps its because drinking is illegal (and therefor you have already crossed the line), perhaps not. The upshot is that about 30% of the peopl
    • Notably most stores will not stock AO rated games, which is why the rating hurt Rockstar. I'm going off of what I was told in the store.

      • Re:Double standards (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lowrydr310 ( 830514 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @09:24AM (#13508616)
        When the whole outrage broke out, I was in Target looking at video games and noticed a sign in place of the GTA:SA stock that read, "Due to mature content, Target will no longer carry Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"

        While I was reading it, I noticed some little kid buying the latest Fiddy Cent CD. Target stocks a ton of rap CDs, and doesn't restrict sales. I find it odd that a kid can't buy GTA because of some pixellated pr0n, but it's perfectly OK to buy a CD of someone rapping about sexual acts (in some cases violent sexual acts).

        • Re:Double standards (Score:3, Informative)

          by Ayaress ( 662020 )
          There are reasons for the different standards with video games than other media. Not good reasons, but reasons nonetheless.

          Movies don't get hit as hard anymore because that's played out. There were an army of Jack Thompson types after Hollywood and they all fizzled out. Nobody managed to get a big settlement out of the studios, and the attempts were abandoned. Investment without return, basically. They never got that one key victory that would give them a free ticket to suck every studio dry.

          Music is a diff
    • No, M is not for 15 year olds, it's for 17 year olds and up.

      Yeah, it's stupid, 17+ instead of 18+, but here's the deal: a game with an AO rating won't get sold in any physical shop short of an adult bookstore, whereas a game with an M rating gets sold EVERYWHERE.

      Regarding the 'God forbid they see pixellated nudity,' there IS allowed to be some partial nudity in Teen rated games and full nudity in M games. AO is reserved for games depicting explicit sex acts. That's the difference. If the sex wasn't on camer
    • Well where I live, Israel, the game got a 18+ PEGI rating.
      But that doesn't it stop it from being sold next to other 18+ rated games in general computer stores you can find in any mall.
      I don't know if it's because we have much bigger problems than game regulation or the people here are smart enough to know it doesn't fucking matter. If a kid here wants to play the game, the kid will play the game. If not by buying, then by copying from a friend.
      Moreover, any kid that can find the hot coffee mod on the net, c
      • The main difference is that here in the US, the society has a large Purtian mind set. Those damn Pilgrims are still haunting us. In Israel (I am from Israel BTW) people are not so uptight about nudity and sex. I remember as a little kid (in Israel) watching this cartoon, introduction to the cartoon was a naked man and woman (presumably Adam and Eve). It was an educational cartoon about the human body...and it would NEVER EVER fly here in the US...not even today.

        Though I agree with you, anyone who ca
    • No, the main difference is pure psychology. There is technically a one-year difference in the "recommendations" between M (17) and AO (18); however, most chain stores will carry "M" but they absolutely refuse to carry "AO". This is exactly the same thing as theatres that will show "R" rated movies (under 17 must be admitted by parent or guardian) but will absolutely refuse to show "NC-17" (no one under 17) purely because of the psychological stigma that people seem to have against the various ratings.

      • A movie or game can have

        "F" bombs every third word, blood, violence, death, horror, and destruction and it will receive a mediocre rating of PG-13 or M.

        That's a total fabrication. No such movie would ever be rated PG-13. The MMPA's guidelines:

        PG-13 -- Parents Strongly Cautioned -- Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Signifies that the film rated may be inappropriate for pre-teens. Parents should be especially careful about letting their younger children attend. Rough or persisten

      • Yup.

        The movie "Sin city" as far as I am concerned is the best thing to EVER come out of hollywood and it deserves a NC17 rating because of the huge amount of violence. the boobies and thonged booty are nothing to even consider.

        but it get's a R rating. I do not want my child watching it because she is not old enoughto understand the violence as it is depicted and how it goes in the storyline.

        but what do kids get banned from in the theatres? not sin city type movies, but the team america kind of movies.

        The

    • Re:Double standards (Score:5, Funny)

      by JesterXXV ( 680142 ) <jtradke@@@gmail...com> on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:54AM (#13508297)
      ...your M (17+) rating is equivalent to our 15 rating...

      Man, I don't think I'll ever get used to the metric system.

    • they can mug people, shoot cops, steal cars, use the services of prostitutes and so forth - but God forbid they see some pixellated nudity and crudely simulated sexual acts.

      I think it was best put as: "You can take a life, but you can't make a life".

    • Re:Double standards (Score:2, Informative)

      by Astatine ( 179864 )
      As another poster said, it's a BBFC rating of 18 in the UK, which is stronger than an ELSPA rating. But it's not "functionally equivalent" to the "AO" rating in the US, because all the UK games stores happily stock 18-rated games. (Doom 3 got an 18 from the BBFC too and they all stocked that, for instance.) It's more similar to an "M" rating, except for the 1 year age difference.

  • The mod was laughable anyway (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:18AM (#13508099)
    If anyone has seen the sex scene in "Team America" between puppets then you know what the "Hot Coffee" mod looks like. Except the mod doesn't even bother to make either participant naked. CJ keeps his clothes on, his girlfriend wears underwear. It's no wonder it was left out because it's pretty lame.

    It's laughable that religious nuts and publicity whores from both parties should seek to decry this tame, lame, disabled mod when the actual:

    • Glorifies gangs
    • Offers numerous ways to murder people including slashing their throats, setting them on fire, cutting them to bits with a chainsaw or just shooting them./li>
    • Murdering cops
    • Doing drive bys
    • Stealing cars
    • Robbing houses
    • Firebombing houses
    • Running people over
    • Pimping hookers
    • Blowing up vehicles including aircraft

    Personally I think GTA is a blast and GTA: SA is nothing short of a classic, but the hypocrisy concerning this mod is pathetic.

    • The game features drugs, gangs, prostitution, murders, theft, arson, drive-bys, prostitution, and remote control planes killing people.

      Slim : Uh, you said 'prostitution' twice.

      Don Canneloni : Well, I like it.
  • How long before a Hot Coffee replacement mod is produced?

    I believe it's scheduled for the Tuesday following the re-release...

  • Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:20AM (#13508107) Journal
    ... killing and torturing people to death isn't questionable in the US, and so hasn't been removed?
    • ... killing and torturing people to death isn't questionable in the US, and so hasn't been removed?

      Yes, that's a bit interesting...

      I often watch movies when I'm on the move. 3h train ride will go much faster with a 2h movie. As long as I watch movies where people kill each other, burn up or so, noone seems to care. But if there's a 30 second love scene, I have to hide the screen to avoid nasty glances from other passengers. Why is that ?

      Btw.. didn't McDonalds get sued for "Hot Coffee" already ? :-)

  • "SAVE OUR KIDS FROM THIS SMUT"

    Of course the fact that the idea of the game is to kill innocent people and steal cars and is actually NAMED after a felony offence is fine...

    Just don't you dare show any breasts, because breasts are evil, breasts corrupt.

    Life immitating Simpsons... next stop the art gallery.

  • To heck with hot coffee, fix the controls! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:21AM (#13508115)
    I bought this game the day it came out, only to find the control setup is horribly broken.

    R* used to be so good about this, its a shame to see them go the route of "just another crappy playstation port" producer. Theyve gone through all this trouble to remove this stupid objectionable content, & completely ignored the glaring bugs that keep the game from being playable.

    Heaven forbid anyone try to use a controller that isnt a carbon copy of the damn PS2 controller! Fuck you Rockstar, you can keep your damn coffee, just give me a usable control scheme!

  • No New mod. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NewStarRising ( 580196 ) <NSRNO@SPAMmaddwarf.co.uk> on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:22AM (#13508118) Homepage
    The whole point of ther re-release is to remove the "hot Coffee" code.
    There will be no "replacement mod", as there will be (according to TakeTwo) no AO content on the disk.

    It _may_ be possible for some enterprising young hacker to _add_ content to the game, or produce their own mini-game with new content, but that is a different kettle of monkeys.

    Will this be the first of many? How many other games have this content in? And are sold as non-AO? And have sales-figures to match GTA?
    Maybe a few less-than-reputable (note: this does not mean small.) games companies may put offensive content in, purely to publices the removal of it, but this will be a minority.

    Droid 1: Hey, whats all this buzz about hot coffee? It's all over the papers.
    Droid 2: Its a part of GTA they pulled for being rude.
    Droid 1: Can we do that? We could use the publicity.
    Droid 2: Well, our games have no hidden offensive content...
    Droid 1: I'll talk to the programming team.
    • There WILL be a replacement mod, but it will add content, as you say.

      diff gta_sa_pc_with_san_andreas.iso gta_sa_pc_sanitized_version.iso

      I predict that the day that this is released, someone will do that.

      Heck, I see "diff '/mnt/windows/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTA San Andreas/' '/mnt/windows/Program Files/Sanitized crappy GTA/'" occurring, as well (disclaimer: I don't know the real pathnames).

  • AO Rating... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by natron 2.0 ( 615149 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `97sretepdn'> on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:23AM (#13508127) Homepage Journal
    What still bugs me the most about all this is that they gave it an AO rating when there are games out there such as PLayboy: The Mansion, that get an M rating...something in the rating system is broken.

    • Re:AO Rating... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 )
      What still bugs me the most about all this is that they gave it an AO rating when there are games out there such as PLayboy: The Mansion, that get an M rating...something in the rating system is broken.

      Yeah, it's broken all right... the GTA never should have gotten an M in the first place.

      • Re:AO Rating... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 )
        What still bugs me the most about all this is that they gave it an AO rating when there are games out there such as PLayboy: The Mansion, that get an M rating...something in the rating system is broken.

        Yeah, it's broken all right... the GTA never should have gotten an M in the first place.

        Why is it that anyone who's critical of this stupid game gets modded as a Troll or shouted down? It's an offensive game.

        I'm not a pacifist by any stretch of the imagination. Truth be told, a part of me really lo

  • Brilliant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChrisF79 ( 829953 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:27AM (#13508151) Homepage
    I don't know about the rest of you but I always like seeing these sketchy marketing ploys by companies. The fact is, the folks making the Grand Theft Auto games aren't out to be the good guys with a squeaky clean brand so what do they have to lose? They know their games shake up the market and get negative press and that's exactly what they want. So they add in this discoverable scene and keep that press wheel turning. I'm impressed, and I don't think this is the last time we're going to see something like this from their company.
    • ...but no. I know some of the guys there, and this *was* removed. Sadly, in hindsight, they should have completely removed it - I suspect, but haven't asked, that instead of deleting the animations and code responsible for doing the crappy sex subgame, they just did something like

      if(g_bDisableCrapSexSubgame){ /* code here */ }

      and left it at that. Thus an enterprising person can just reenable it. This time, you can bet all the code and assets have been completely removed :)

      Why did they remove it? So that r

  • But it sells millions! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Phudman ( 813414 )
    I wonder if Sony is still going to rely so damn heavily on the GTA francise now? I believe they once had a no sex policy in Playstation games before.

  • Not the first game to be pulled (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WebGangsta ( 717475 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:39AM (#13508213)
    Will this be the first game in a series of many to come that will be pulled off the market to be changed due to questionable content?

    If you believe the marketing hype on The Guy Game's website [theguygame.com], then there already has been a game pulled for questionable content.

    And by "questionable", I mean supposedly/allegedly containing video of a topless 17-year-old girl who had signed release papers allowing the video to be shot but who later came forward and sued Sony/MSFT/Guy Game for including the underage video [gamespot.com] in the game.

    I know I've still seen the game on store shelves this week, so I don't know the current status of this lawsuit or whether the game was pulled and released without her video included.

  • ...here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brunokummel ( 664267 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:47AM (#13508254) Journal
    Well, i don't really get it...i mean come on!
    Every now and then i get surprised on how much those critics are really off with their ratings!

    It 's like saying : "It is ok to steal cars, to kill people and to deal drugs, as long as we keep the game 'clean' with no sex content and no swearing!"

    Come on, people!! If children were really influenced by the video-games they play, I'd rather have a kid playing the Old Larry games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry [wikipedia.org] than any other violent content game! I mean sex is better than shooting people, right?

    And don't even get me started on swearing! Did you know that the cursing words are not in the same part of your brain where other words are regularly stored? Therefore recent studies have showed that cursing is more a physiological necessity than a habit!

    Let's put the game on as it is and let the children play! I mean if parents are not around to teach their children right from wrong, we cannot expect video-games do that for them !!

  • Will this be the first game in a series of many to come that will be pulled off the market to be changed due to questionable content?

    I'm not sure about it being just for questionable content, but back in Nintendo days they pulled 'Mike Tysons Punchout' off the shelf after the ear-biting incident. It was re-released under another name with some unknown guy at the end.
    • that's not what happened, they re-released punchout years before the biting incident. It was either his rape trial (or if i remember correctly, their license on his name simply ran out) that led nintendo to replace tyson with Mr. Dream

  • God Forbid... (Score:3, Funny)

    by NardofDoom ( 821951 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @08:50AM (#13508267)
    God forbid these kids ever go through puberty and actually have sex. They'll be scarred for life!

  • Down with GTA! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rogue Jedi X ( 911665 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @09:13AM (#13508505)
    Who needs this blasphemous piece of software, when you have nice wholesome games like Manhunt?

  • Idea (Score:2)

    by Joe U ( 443617 ) *
    Heres an idea, how about some smart people get together, take the video from the hot coffee mod and start patching other video games.

    I know for a fact that Sim City could use this.

    Hey Mr. Mayor, you need to build an airport, would you like to come up for some coffee?

    Or better yet, some of those board games that Hasbro keeps releasing, like Monopoly. Hey, you landed on free parking... well, you get the idea.

    Lets get to work people; we can give every single game an AO rating!
  • At least one chain of used video game dealers in Los Angeles is now paying a premium price for copies of the original game. Not bad for a game that's at least a year old at this point. Given how many copies of the original clean (that's clean of censorship) version there are out there, I imagine that no one will have trouble playing the game as it was intended to be played.

  • Rockstar Defrauded the ESRB (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hchaput ( 544841 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @11:47AM (#13509896)
    Just a friendly reminder that the Hot Coffee controversy is not about sex in GTA. It's about Rockstar defrauding the ESRB to get a lower rating so GTA would be carried in Walmart and Gamestop and other stores that won't carry AO games. Rockstar was contractually obliged to reveal all content to the ESRB. (I work for a major game developer, not Rockstar, and I know that we must disclose all disk contents to the ESRB.) They didn't disclose the sexual content, and once they were caught they lied about putting on the the disk and tried to blame some hacker who found the enabling bits.

    Game developers can put whatever content they want in their games. Nobody is stopping them. (Not even congress.) But you can't lie about it to the ESRB. Don't get caught up in the "is sex worse than violence?!" argument. That's not the point. The point is that sex won't get carried in Walmart, but sex sells, so Rockstar put sex in the game and lied about it to the ESRB.

    As a game developer, I'm pissed as hell at Rockstar for screwing things up for the rest of us. If you're gonna put sex in the game, at least fess up to it. Don't act all surprised and say, "Goodness, how did that get in there?" What a bunch of cowards.

  • OK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Treeluvinhippy ( 545814 ) <liquidsorcery.gmail@com> on Thursday September 08, 2005 @02:11PM (#13511306)
    For all the Slashdotters who illustrate the point that religious groups and soccer moms are flipping out over a crappy sex scene in a video game, while at the same time condoning the violence need to do one thing.

    Please STFU.

    They do not condone the violence in video games and movies anymore than they do sex. Ok sure, your Mom might not bat an eye about you killing virtual cops, but at the same time will flip out over a little nudity. I'm not talking about her; I'm talking about the organized movements that wish to censor our entertainment for our own good.

    Sex is just the latest taboo for these organizations. These same groups a few years ago have tried to censor games based on the amount of violence. The old timer's here should be telling the younger geeks about the media uproar caused by Doom and other games of the same genre way back in 1993. There was a lot of debating for years that violence in media was a leading cause of violent crime.

    For example, I heard a lot more about how the kids responsible for the massacre at Columbine played FPS, then I did about the lack of the parents saying to themselves, 'Hey my kid has a swastika on his wall and lots of books about Hitler, is a social outcast at school and has an unhealthy fascination regarding death. Maybe I should look into this?'

    However with the gaming companies banding together and creating a rating system it helped soften the violence argument by putting right on the box what the game's content is. The attempts to vilify video games because of violence started to make fewer headlines, for the responsibility is now on the parents. If your kid was playing games that you do not approve of, the fault was now yours. Sure there where still complaints by the hard core, but they were not about to shut up about the issue even if they did succeed at eliminating video games altogether. Sleazy lawyers will also continue to take up these cases as long as they think they can make the slightest bit of profit off of them. However for the time being, we won the battle for the most part.

    However a battle is not a war. If you guys continue to use the argument that "What's the big deal about a little sex in a game where as a player, I'm allowed to commit a shopping list of horrendous crimes?" That's going to bite us on the ass by helping to reignite the violence in video games debate which our opponents will love to see happen.

    Please stop giving the enemy more bullets.

  • Finally (Score:3, Funny)

    by Digital Vomit ( 891734 ) on Thursday September 08, 2005 @03:06PM (#13511968) Homepage Journal
    Finally, a version that's safe for my kids.

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