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ESRB Demands Hidden Content Review 70

Posted by Zonk from the picky-picky dept.
Gamasutra is reporting that the ESRB is now mandating an audit of hidden game content. The audit is retroactive to the 1st of this month. From the article: "Fully disclosing hidden content accessible as Easter eggs and via cheat codes has always been part of ESRB's explicitly stated requirements when submitting games to be rated. In the July 20 public announcement, which focused on the revocation of a specific game's rating assignment, we formally stated that any pertinent content shipped on the game disc that may be relevant to a rating must be disclosed to ESRB, even if it is not intended to ever be accessed during game play."
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ESRB Demands Hidden Content Review More

ESRB Demands Hidden Content Review

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  • How are they going to enforce this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Malarame ( 891558 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:11PM (#13541119)
    This is just a publicity stunt. They're doing it solely so they can look good and say that they've done something the politicians will like. There's no way they can actually enforce this.
    • It really doesn't mean a thing to anyone who knows what's going on (ie, the /. crowd) but it is meant to make Joe Schmoe and his soccer mom wife happy.

      Now they believe that 8 year old Little Johnny is safe from pornography in the M rated games they buy him.
    • There's no way they can actually enforce this.

      They don't have to "enforce" it. It's in the content provider's best interest to provide this data. Otherwise, they might be the next Rockstar.

      • Unlikely. Patches that go beyond the rating of the original game (whether unlocked or added) are as old as gaming and never before has anyone from the mainstream press cared. They only cared about GTA because it's trendy to spout FUD about GTA.
    • Just like they enforce everything else; if your game doesn't have ESRB certification, then retailers won't sell it.

      Rob

    • Re:How are they going to enforce this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday September 12, 2005 @08:26PM (#13543043)
      This is just a publicity stunt. They're doing it solely so they can look good and say that they've done something the politicians will like. There's no way they can actually enforce this.

      They can and will enforce it. Do you know why? Because the ESRB is comprised of the game publishers. This is the fact that people sometimes seem to forget. It is not an agency outside the industry. It is the industry, literally. The ESRB was created because the industry wanted to self-police and avoid government intervention; the alternative to the ESRB is not nothing, it's a government agency like the FCC overseeing video games. Which would you rather have to deal with?

      The ESRB can and does routinely hand out fines to member companies. From what I remember from my time in the industry, fines start at $10,000 and go up from there. Most of these fines are not publicized because they're for procedural things like answering ESRB requests later than promised. There's no question of whether or not the fines will be paid; the fines will be paid or the publisher loses membership in the ESRB. No membership, no ratings; no ratings, no sales at stores like Wal-Mart, Gamestop or EB.

      Regardless, this is nothing different than what the ESRB's stated policy has always been. They're just reiterating it because obviously a few publishers didn't quite get it. Publishers are required to submit the most prurient content for review. There's no qualifier saying "the most prurient playable content". Whether it's supposed to be playable or not doesn't matter. The ESRB has been saying this all along through the whole Hot Coffee thing; it's not as if they don't know about easter eggs or hidden content. It's not as if the publishers can pull a fast one on their own industry group. The rules have always been pretty clear.

      I guess what I'm saying is sheesh people, everybody calm down. This is what you want to have happen; the industry policing itself, and enforcing its own rules. This is the way you keep people like Hillary Clinton from writing laws saying the ESRB is ineffective and therefore the government needs to step in and assume its role.

  • New Cheat Code Scandal! (Score:5, Funny)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:11PM (#13541124) Homepage

    It has recently been revealed that young users of the Internet can unlock "hidden" pornographic content by using the following cheat code:

    w w w . p e n t h o u s e . c o m

    The ESRB has demanded a full recall of all software which works with the above code.

  • ESRB dupe (Score:5, Funny)

    by 75th Trombone ( 581309 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:14PM (#13541155) Homepage Journal
    "Prior to July 20, we explicitly said you had to tell us about all hidden stuff.

    On July 20, we explicitly said you had to tell us about all hidden stuff."

    ESRB's been learning from Slashdot. Unfortunately, it's been from the editors, not the posters.
    • "ESRB's been learning from Slashdot. Unfortunately, it's been from the editors, not the posters."

      What, would you prefer the ERSB to change its name to the GNAA?

    • Re:ESRB dupe (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zvar ( 158636 )
      "Prior to July 20, we explicitly said you had to tell us about all hidden stuff.
      On July 20, we explicitly said you had to tell us about all hidden stuff."
      ESRB's been learning from Slashdot. Unfortunately, it's been from the editors, not the posters.

      Not really. It's more like:
      "Prior to July 20, we explicitly said you had to tell us about all hidden stuff that can be accessed."
      "On July 20, we explicitly said you had to tell us about all hidden stuff. Period."

  • They're asking for trouble. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:16PM (#13541179)
    Many games with female protagonists have nudeskins somewhere in their files, for example. There's a LOT of "hidden" content in many games, often merely because they forgot to remove it from the repository after throwing it out of the game or didn't want to break anything. What if some artist routinely put porn into the unused texture space of some assets (you laugh, that happens, just not with porn)? What if they decided to cull some features to lower the rating but didn't completely delete the stuff?

    I know that a LOT of games would get rated 18 here in Germany should they do such a reevaluation here (often blood effects and stuff get disabled in the german version to avoid a ban from advertising and they can be enabled again by flipping a few bits). Obviously that's not really a problem for the US, the only country specific "taming" I heard of was Giants: Citizen Kabuto, where that Sea Reaper girl is topless in the international version. But cutting of content to get a lower rating happens in the US, too (just that it'll be removed from all versions, not just the US one). EA seems to do it a lot. Wouldn't surprise me if that was done sloppily after the months of 20 hour days leading up to a release. After all, you might have attempted to load that stuff somewhere and instead of going bug hunting you just kill the trigger.
    • What if some artist routinely put porn into the unused texture space of some assets (you laugh, that happens, just not with porn)? What if they decided to cull some features to lower the rating but didn't completely delete the stuff?

      The answer is very simple: all contributions to the product are audited and/or reviewed when they are submitted. This is how professional software development teams work. At my job, before I'm allowed to "check in" any changes, another developer must review thatm. Our versi

      • The games industry is sloppy, especially towards the end with all this "we've set the deadline two months too early but we believe you can make it" stuff going on. I mean, sometimes games ship that cannot be installed or run without a patch at all. Strict policing of assets or code would never catch on there.

      • I do not think you understand the problem. Here is an example of what the prblem is:

        1. The developers put an edgy thing into their game (lets say blood from gunshots).

        2. This game is now submitted to testers at the production end, who notice the blood.

        3. The testers tell the production legal team about the blood.

        4. The legal team decides that they want a "T" rating, so they tell the devolpers to take it out.

        5. The developers, now in beta and nearing release date, decide to disable the blood (say,

        • My point is that step 5 will now have to read: 5) The developers make a significant change to the code to completely remove the blood, because the ESRB says they have to. Management, understanding the difference between "delete" and "disable", uses the code review process to ensure that this is done correctly. You don't need to tell me that it's not that easy to simply delete code when there's a tight schedule - I've been programming for 25 years. My point is that the new ESRB requirement will send a me

  • Farewell to quality? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Oracle of Bandwidth ( 528405 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:18PM (#13541197)
    Does this mean that games that do the whole "under render thing" rendering the body and then rendering the clothes on it, are suddenly AO games? Shame
    • I don't think that would qualify as nudity, unless nipples, sexual organs, pubic hair, etc are drawn on the underlying body. These should not be necessary for the whole "under render thing".

    • Does this mean that games that do the whole "under render thing" rendering the body and then rendering the clothes on it, are suddenly AO games?

      Not necessarily. If games don't ever send the naughty bits' meshes to the video card, or they use a "caulk" texture [wikipedia.org] (solid transparency or solid black) when drawing body parts that aren't meant to be seen, then the ability to draw the body parts isn't shipped on the disc.

    • Well, at least these games have someone that deserves a slap in the face (unless the clothes are REALLY small, like bikinis). Rendering unnecessary polygons means less necessary polygons available. If the model doesn't change clothes, cull the unseen faces, if it does add a way to tag segments as "invisible" (e.g. hide the legs and pelvic area if the character is wearing long trousers). Also reduces Z-fighting.

  • Games w/o ratings (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lucky130 ( 267588 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:24PM (#13541247)
    Can games be released as "Unrated" in a similar way to movies? If so, I say down with ratings! :)
    • Yes they can, it's just some stors refuse to carry anything not rated by ESRB (Walmart)
    • there's only been one game that I know of to have an unrated version and that was Leisure suit larry Magna Cum Laude, even though Action Replay (the same ones to get the code for the Sex scene in GTA: San andreas) also released a code for the game to remove the censor bar from the characters (except for Larry), no one seemed to throw a shit fit then. The code is gone now though (probably took it off when they took down all the codes for san andreas).

  • Full Disclosure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:38PM (#13541371) Journal
    From TFA: Fully disclosing hidden content accessible as Easter eggs and via cheat codes has always been part of ESRB's explicitly stated requirements when submitting games to be rated.

    I wonder what "fully" means? I mean, every cheat code possibility? Like this: If you change color register 1-32, 79, and 101-120 to the color of "flesh," characters will appear naked, but not anatomically naked. How about: if left player LP_YPOS is changed to 0 and right player RP_YPOS is changed to 132, colliding characters will have LP face aligned with RP crotch.

    This is a logistical nightmare. Instead, the ESRB will have to accept blanket statements about possible cheat code types. Things like pallette changes, animation reassignment, physics changes, collision detection, hard-drive content hacking, and so on.

    On the bright side, it sounds like companies will need to hire new testers. Not to mention be nice to the cheat-device manufacturers.
    • That would be ridiculous. This most likely has been triggered by the recent incident with Rockstar's GTA San Andreas. They obviously refer to content put in there by the game creators, unaltered by such kinds of hacks as you describe. I believe the only difference from their previous policy is that they're emphasizing that game creators should disclose even content that is not intended to be seen by the players of the game (ie images or whatever cut out of the game but the files still left in there because
    • On the bright side, it sounds like companies will need to hire new testers.

      Having to raise the cost of games is the bright side? You must hate games.
      • "Having to raise the cost of games is the bright side? You must hate games.

        How the hell do you infer that from what he said?

        Your conclusion makes no sense. Oh, I see. [datanation.com]
        • Er, I was not attacking him. :) I was making the point that while he may wish there were more game testing jobs, the result for the vast majority of us would be higher game costs to *pay* for the newly required testers.
          • Well, at least it was an un-elegant non-attack :)

            I see your point, but after struggling through bug after bug (and patch after patch) of for instance Neverwinter Nights, I think I'd prefer paying $5 or so more for decent QA, though.
            I mean, they had something like twenty patches in the first few monts. It felt like a public beta more than a finished product.

            The lack of QA makes me hate games :) *ducks*

    • Re:Full Disclosure (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Surt ( 22457 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:39PM (#13541905) Homepage Journal
      Cheat code has a specific meaning in the industry. It's a series of key presses that causes the application to go down a non-standard code path. Neither of your examples would qualify, as the first would be considered a hack (changing color registers in a way unknown to the application), and the second would be considered normal game behavior (assuming you are allowed to move your characters to those positions in the normal game, and if not, you would simply document that there is a cheat code that allows you to rearrange the positions of the game objects).

      The ESRB really wants very simple information:

      1) are there hidden nudie pictures being shipped with the product
      2) are there hidden sex animations being shipped with the product

      Note that the GTA game causing this whole issue would have failed both of these.

      Game companies shouldn't need to hire any new testers. Instead, this will all be taken care of contractually. The coders and artists will sign contracts promising under penalty of $$$ and firing not to include such content. The development house will promise under penalty of $$$ not to include such content to the publisher. The publisher will promise under penalty of $$$ and publicity nightmare to the ESRB that they have not included any undocumented content. When the shit hits the fan, the ESRB will say: the publisher lied to us, but now they have to pay up and fix things. The publisher will say they were hoodwinked by the dev house, will fine them, and maybe not publish any more games by them. The dev house will fine and fire the offending devs or artists, and promise to be good in the future.

      Problem solved.
      • [1.6KB of text]
        >Problem solved.

        I'm sure you mean Problem created.
      • The "cheat code" to execute the Hot Coffee minigame in GTASA was a change to a savegame using a third party tool. That means your game must not display any material unfit for the rating even if its data or code is compromised. Sure, they will probably ignore it if the material is completely added in the patch but how can the ESRB tell "unlocked" (i.e. the code was still in there, just a few bytes changed to trigger it) and added (nothing was in there, it's just a mod) content apart?
        • I still think this is pretty straightforward: where do the models, textures, and code necessary to reveal unrated content come from?

          If your game provides any one of these 3 things, and you don't tell the ESRB about it, you should be considered in violation of your ESRB rating contract, and face the full penalties it provides.

          If, for reasons of ease, you wish to include non-player visible content in your game (and there are indeed many good reasons to do so), then you provide a viewer to the ESRB so that con
  • One of the best-kept secrets in the video gaming industry is that video games use "binary code." I'm sure every parent will be shocked to learn that this "binary code" is the exact same medium by which electronic pornography is stored. Even a seemingly innocent game such as "Super Mario Bros. 3" contains pornography with the constituent bits and bytes incidentally being placed in another order. In fact it can be demonstrated that merely by rearranging these bits and bytes, that any video game can be found to contain pornography. I must therefore sincerely reccomend that this licentious and decidedly un-American industry be placed under the most scrutinous regulations lest they should continue to corrupt our youth.

  • "Fully disclosing hidden content accessible as Easter eggs and via cheat codes..."

    Too bad the dry humping minigame in GTA:SA is not available via easter egg or cheat code. If you only have the console and the game, there is no way to access that content. I'm not saying it's acceptable to have the code left in the game to be easily unlocked (using alternative means), but I just find it funny that their "cracking down" on games doesn't include the sole game that started this whole controversy.

    • That has always been a part of their policy. This time they added that they will require that even content that is not intended to ever be seen by the player is fully disclosed.

      It's in the freakin' summary, man.
    • Umm... from the summary..

      ... even if it is not intended to ever be accessed during game play.

      Anyway, it's kind of pointless makign this assertion now anyways. After all the crap Rockstar is going through a situation like this wouldnt happen again for a long long time. As an above poster mentioend it's just a publicity thing.

      But then again, publicity or not it's important for the general population to feel like the ESRB is doign their job.
      • I agree with everything you said, and I also think the Mature ESRB rating should be 18+ so this wouldn't be an issue. But, it bugs me that adults can buy GTA:SA, where the graphic that surrounds the ESRB rating is of a multi-gangmember driveby in action, and then have the nerve to get worked up by a dryhumping minigame that was never meant to see the light of day.

        There are many other clues on the box that suggest this game is not suitable for kids, and then there's the "Strong Sexual Content" declaration

        • I would like to believe that the majority of parents out there are smarter than the media makes them out to be.

          I really think the majority of the hub-bub that has gone on about GTA is politically motivated. GTA is obviously not packed with family values so any politician who goes up against it obviously is mister (or Mrs) Family Values.

  • ESRB trying to ban all modding? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @09:25PM (#13543389)
    This statement worries me:

    ESRB remains concerned about third party modifications that undermine the accuracy of the original rating, and we are exploring ways to maintain the credibility of the rating system with consumers in light of modifications of this nature.

    Since the only way to prevent a mod from affecting the rating of a game is to ban modding altogether, it looks to me like the ESRB wants to prevent modding. They might do this by automatically rating any game that supports mods with an AO rating.

    This would be a huge blow against mods, and let's face it, mods drive a large portion of the game industry. Would anybody still be playing Half-Life 1 were it not for a few of the more popular mods released for it? HLDM and HL2DM only get you so far before mods take over as the dominant multiplayer experience.
    • Thing is, if you're obsessive enough and skilled enough, any game ever created is moddable.
      • Exactly, Hot Coffee was a direct change to a datafile using a hex editor. If you change enough bytes in Windows it "contains porn". There are absolutely no gurantees you can make about what will happen when your code is compromised.
      • Given a 3D model file of something objectional (e.g. nudity), there exist ways to put it into many games where there are no official mod tools (including the game that started the debate, Grand Theft Auto)
      • They can make it hard enough to do that you won't want to. Imagine if you had a game delivered through the Steam platform that loaded all data from encrypted GCF platforms, and continually changed code to prevent efforts from hooking in?

        Yes, it would never be impossible to mod such a game, it would be too much trouble to bother.
    • Nothing protect you from insults during E or T online games. So the ESRB created a notice: "Game Experience May Change During Online Play".

      Why not put a new notice on every single game and splash screens.

      "ESRB Notice: Game Experience May Change When Using Third-Party Patches and/or Cheat Devices".

      This problem was already solved!

  • So all the special junk in all games has to be disclosed now..(and before?) How do I get access!
  • They will not fix the problem until the ESRB corrects the way it currently reviews games. They have the publisher send in a video tape of what the publisher says is the "most questionable" content and have people watch the tape. All a game publisher has to do is not send content in for review (most likely what Rockstar did, I personally believe Rockstar wanted someone to find the accidentally left in content). Because the ESRB is too lazy or inept to actually play a game to test it, they never if know fo
    • I agree, it's not like they can't play the games, after all the USK [www.usk.de] manages to do that. They even demand all cheatcodes and locations of all secrets and want to play through the entire game. According to their site stats they review about two thousand games yearly so it seems possible. I mean, the ESRB is probably funded much better than the USK.
  • Here's what a simple Photoshop macro can do to their 'early childhood' decal. Is this the kind of 'content rating' imagery we want our kids to see?

    Repulsive hidden pornography unlocked! [telia.com]*

    *The macro (mod/patch) merely rearranges and unlocks features ALREADY IN THE CONTENT supplied by ESRB.

    I demand a complete withdrawal of all ESRB decals, and any future decals they design should not be possible to transform into pornography, violent scenes, pentagrams or curse words.
  • Gee, I was looking for something interesting to mod up and found nothing. Everybody is saying the same thing. I disagree with you guys entirely. What the ESRB is looking for is hidden content within a game. You guys are still pretending that someone on the outside came up with hot coffee, but that's not true. Rockstar came up with Hot Coffee. End of story. Yes any game can be modded, but that's not exactly what they are looking for. Perhaps, for example, they are wanting the Sims to make it not as e

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