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The Courts Government Entertainment Games News

LA Attorney Sues Rockstar Over Hot Coffee 89

Posted by Zonk from the you-knew-it-was-coming dept.
Next Generation reports that the L.A. city attorney has filed suit against Rockstar, for a misleading ad campaign and 'unfair competition'. The suit was prompted because of the much publicized 'Hot Cofee' mod discovered last year. From the article: "'Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products - whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume,' Delgadillo said. The lawsuit is actually part of a wider effort to investigate the marketing of videogames."
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LA Attorney Sues Rockstar Over Hot Coffee More

LA Attorney Sues Rockstar Over Hot Coffee

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  • All right! (Score:5, Funny)

    by faloi ( 738831 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:21AM (#14578644)
    "Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products - whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume"

    Now we can sue film makers to disclose all the goofs and inside jokes that show up in films, instead of waiting for people to single step through DVDs to find 'em!

  • No entertainment, by law (Score:5, Informative)

    by hesiod ( 111176 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:21AM (#14578646)
    > Delgadillo [...] has requested that the companies fully disclose the content of their games.

    Doesn't that sound strangely like "There may be no surprises in any game, we must know exactly what's going to happen before it happens?"
    • No, it means that the ratings board, whose job it is to evaluate every piece of the entertainment, should know everything about the game.

      It's still absurd though, if it means that it's hidden so well that you need to download an extra tool to be able to access the hidden content, at which point it's easier to just search for real porn on the internet, than it is to search for the hidden-artificial-porn-revealer on the internet.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Exactly, Leaving it in there was pretty much handing it to Modders...It's like parents who hide guns in their houses and then say "How did they get ahold of the gun?!" when their kid shoots someone (or themselves)

      Rockstar Should have just gone with the AO rating untill they were able to make a version without the sex scenes in it (so they could sell at walmart...so on an so forth)

    • Lawyer has not point but Rockstar could be liable (Score:5, Interesting)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:54AM (#14579014)
      If renoir painted a nude orgy on a canvas, and then changed his mind and painted most of it over and put clothes on everyone so it looked like people spraweld on the grass at a sunday church picnic would there be a problem. If some currator scraped off the covering paint to reveal the draft orgy form should we go after renoir for public obscenity?

      IN the case of the game there were some dark corners that were painted over. Someone wrote some code to expose them. They presumably were not inteded to be exposed. If anything they suggest the probity of the maker in deciding to remove them. But they did not excise them they painted them over. There could be lots of reasons to do this. Like the great painters they might have just been trying to save cash on canvases and just swithed off access rather than paying someone to carefully extract the sexy bits from the main code.

      On the other hand another analogy is to prohibition era vinters who while forbidden to make wine except for sacraments, would ship barrels of "grape juice" to New York city with explicit instructions no to add so much sugar and certain kinds of yeast because then it might accidentally turn into wine which would be illegal. This winking cover up of the underlying product was of course intended to sell more grape juice because of it's unauthorized potential.

      So perhaps this comes down to proving intent. Did rock star intend hot coffee to happen? Did they want to create a whisper marketing regime. And did they actually seed the hints that it existed?

      • If Renoir painted a nud orgy, I'd be willing to download spyware to see it.
      • So perhaps this comes down to proving intent. Did rock star intend hot coffee to happen? Did they want to create a whisper marketing regime. And did they actually seed the hints that it existed?

        When you look at Rockstar and Hot Coffee what you see is:

        1 a company that has pushed hard, recklessly, against the limits of what the general public --- not the young male-dominated gaming community --- will tolerate in an M-rated game. This is what unites Little Haiti with the soccer moms of Westchester County.

        2

    • Re:Sorta has a point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mausmalone ( 594185 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:32AM (#14579437) Homepage Journal
      Actually, there's really no evidence to say that anybody in management or even most of the programming staff knew that there was a "good chance" (or even remote chance) of it being hacked. The most likely scenario is that the DMA guys were kicking the idea around and decided not to put the scene into the final game, but neglected to remove it properly from the code and from the art. I'd be willing to be dollars to doughnuts that this was almost entirely a case of one guy making a minor screw up, and that's why I'm pissed at all these people who want to crucify Rockstar and Take2 over this. It's so insanely trivial and inane that it actually makes my brain hurt.
    • Can anyone explain why in a game that features cartoon murder, cartoon theft and cartoon dangerous driving the addition of cartoon nudity would increase it's "maturity rating"?

      I think someone's got their priorities mixed up somewhere.
      • As I understand it, there isn't any actual nudity in the disabled minigame; just two clothed adults dry-humping eachother.
        If you want nudity, you apparantly need to install the graphics for that yourself. They're not in the actual game files.
        The whole thing seems very much like an early prototype that was deemed uninteresting and scrapped. Had it been intended as an easter egg, at least they would have added nude graphics to it.
    • There is always alot of talk about the DMCA around here, I remember one case where that Volleyball games for xbox or PS2 was hacked to include naked models. The company was attempting to sue or press charges because it was not a fair use to modify the game. Would this not apply to this sistuation as well. someone illegally modified the game, so wouldnt Rockstar be able to press charges, and claim that the content was never supposed to be avaiable in the first place? It's kind of funny how the laws seem t

  • RE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:23AM (#14578663) Homepage
    They should print out the entire code of the game, and present it to the attorney and ask him tom point out the objectionable scene...
    In order to view the Hot Coffee, a grainy, non detailed cartoon fellatio scene, didn't you have to go onto the internet and download the code? If someone has access to the internet, couldn't they download non graing, non cartoon fellation? Isn't this somewhat akin to walking past nude women and Hustler mags to get to the SI Swimsuit issue?
    Lawyers sue- it is what they do. You can't get mad at a lawyer for suing any more than you can get mad at a dog for barking....
    • didn't you have to go onto the internet and download the code

      Speaking completely out my ass, I beleive the function chunk was in the game the whole time, just unaccessable by any means available on the disc itself. A hack for the PC version allowed you to somehow call that function and run the code.
    • The scene IS in the code - that's what the whole controversy is about. All the mods do is unlock access to it.

      On the other hand I tend to agree that this whole thing is getting out of hand. This kind of widespread public outrage, often in some way misguided, only benefits Rockstar. Get over it already
      • Only benefits Rockstar?!?!

        Rockstar has lost TONS of earnings because of this. Here [yahoo.com] it states that they've lost 28.8m due to the game being rated AO. Not only that, but Take2Game's CEO was rated the worst CEO of 2005 [gamespot.com] .

        I personally am surprised this Hot Coffee issue is still being dragged out... mainly because the sex scene wasn't available by default... people had to *work* around the normal game to get to it. I think this Hot Coffee issue has been more an issue of politics -- they are just attacki

    • What's the difference between downloading a crack that unlocks the Hot Coffee minigame, and downloading nude skins for, say, "The Sims 2"?

      Because the content was already on the disc? The functionality to access the content was removed, though. You needed intent by the consumer to modify the game so that it doesn't function as it was intended to; and not simply by entering in some easter-egg code, but modifying the executable itself. You can't have game companies suing Sony because their PS2 was modded

      • Re:RE (Score:5, Interesting)

        by BewireNomali ( 618969 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:52AM (#14578974)
        isn't this game rated mature? if so, the issue here isn't that mature content was on the disc. IT was about disclosure.

        I've made a point of this before. Coders are a select subclass. They communicate in a language that most cannot comprehend. Further, they can communicate with machines and make them do things. It's an awesome power - really the penultimate modern day power.

        The issue here is that the non-technical non-coding governmental and institutional bodies are impotent in the face of this power. Not only is this code completely opaque to them, they've no inclination to learn of it or to gain knowledge of it. So they want full disclosure. Hot Coffee is like pulling off the fig-leaf. Suddenly it dawns on most luddites that there's a whole world out there they know nothing about - an empire being constructed right under their noses. They are now aware that to a segment of the population, they are naked and defenseless.

        Someone above posted that they should just print out the code and have the pols pick out the offending portions. That's exactly it. They can - and you can. And no one in power or invested in the status quo wants that at all.

        I've said it before. Coders devalue themselves - coders have ALL the power in this world. They then turn around and give it away for a paycheck.

        • I've said it before. Coders devalue themselves - coders have ALL the power in this world. They then turn around and give it away for a paycheck.

          Until you can show me how I can write some code that will make beer and pizza flow out of my PC's uSB port, I am pretty sure I will continue to need that paycheque. At least until the replicator is invented, or the whole world becomes communist.

        • I meant ULTIMATE instead of PENULTIMATE. Sorry for the confusion.

        • You have cyclop perspective and taught android mentality. Einstein was singularity stupid. "Born coder, thanks coder" you rotate a 4 coder stage life!

          How exactly is coding the "ultimate power"? For some reason I think the ability to make large groups of people do things that you ask, like say "hey go over there and maybe get killed just make sure you kill those other guys" is maybe a bit more ultimate.
          A coder may be paid to program the launch code and ballistics for a ICBM, but that coder does not have the

  • Hot coffee? (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:24AM (#14578672)
    Does the McDonald's case act as precedent?
    • I wish I could mod this "slow clap +1"
    • Ah, this old chestnut. No, because MCD was found to be partially guilty of serving a product unsafe for consumption. The woman was still chided by the judge for being a dumbass and holding the coffee in her lap, which is why the settlement was greatly reduced. However, the discovery process revealed that 700 people had received burns from their coffee (including passers-by getting splashed with it) over a 10-year period. Should coffee be hot? Absolutely. Most coffee is served at 135 to 140 degrees. S

  • Um no... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:25AM (#14578682)
    'Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products

    Wrong.

    Otherwise, Sherlock Holmes books would be illegal, because they don't tell you who the murderer is up front.

    • Re:Um no... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
      I think you misunderstand the argument. The content he's referring to would not be the solution of a Sherlock Holmes book, but rather that it's a mystery story that may involve investigations of murder, theft, personal relationships, and various other acts of criminal or personal nature. If Conan Doyle suddenly broke into a steamy scene indicitive of a cheap romance novel, you'd probably be yelling "What the [insert explicative]?!"

      That being said, I can't think of any laws that force a publisher to give awa

      • Re:Um no... (Score:2, Informative)

        by snwcrash ( 520762 )
        Can you really sue a company for defrauding another company, neither of which you represent? Seems that you have a lack of standing not being a direct victim of fraud. Arguing that the M->Ao rating change somehow caused you some injury probably isn't a legal slam dunk I would imagine.

        Not to mention that this was not an easter egg or something like that, but something that required non-standard tools to exploit a disabled block of code if I understand it correctly.
        • Can you really sue a company for defrauding another company, neither of which you represent?

          Difficult to say. In this case he may be able to argue that consumers were directly defrauded through the defrauding of the ESRB (a consumer protection agency of sorts). Whether he'll be successful or not is up to the judge to decide.
        • Can you really sue a company for defrauding another company, neither of which you represent?

          The story says it's the Los Angeles city attorney's office. Doesn't that mean he represents the people of Los Angeles? Whether or not a majority of LA's population would approve of the law suit, he probably thinks he's acting on behalf of his constituents.

      • Re:Um no... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MikeBabcock ( 65886 )
        Books are a good comparison actually -- where's the ESRB ratings on my books? I want to make sure that book I bought has no profanity in it.

        Seriously, they gave the game an M for mature rating, as is God of War. God of war has full frontal nudity cut-scenes and 'sex' mini-game.

        Come on people.
    • A book is a random access device. You can just turn to the last page :) But just in case, I would like to take this opportunity to help JK Rowling avoid a similar lawsuit:

      Snape kills Dumbledorf, page 606.

      You're welcome!
    • "Otherwise, Sherlock Holmes books would be illegal, because they don't tell you who the murderer is up front."

      Well... no. Just playing Devil's Advocate here, this wouldn't be the case because a lawyer could get a copy of the book, read it through, and give it a thumb's up. This would be more akin to a Tyler Durden'esque insertion of a single pornagraphic frame into the movie Bambi. The lawyers would be asking for a copy of the film to single step through every frame of the movie and look for 'wrong stuff
    • And KFC would be in trouble.

      /Although one might now want to know whats in there.

  • Free advertising (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What? Hot Coffee? Never heard of it, lawsuits are educational, I'll have to go get that now.

  • Food != Entertainment (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fr05t ( 69968 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:28AM (#14578722)
    "whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume"

    Wow! I haven't heard an analogy that terrible in awhile. Playing a video game that has content (not accessible unless you unlock it), is most certainly not like selling food with poison as an unlabeled ingredient.

    The 2 most notable differences being 1) Video games don't cause death and serious illness, and 2) If there is arsenic in my candy bar it's still bad for me even if I'm not interested in eating poison.
    • Not to mention, food vendors don't have to disclose the nutritional contents of the packaging of the food they sell because it's not intended for consumption... sort of like the Hot Coffee scenes were not intended for consumption. If someone eats the plastic wrapper on a sandwich, they shouldn't sue the company for not saying, "Hey, don't eat the plastic wrapper"
      • "Hey, don't eat the plastic wrapper"

        But they still need to remind us that coffee (the kind you drink) is hot. How about putting bright yellow labels on hand guns, with a stick man holding the gun to his head. Then a big red circle with a line through it?

        Oh even better, DO NOT DRINK WATER labels on toilets!

  • Wishful thinking (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:29AM (#14578727)
    'Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products - whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume,' Delgadillo said.

    *sigh* I wish. Two words: Natural flavors.
    • On the Ben and Jerry's container - Serving per container: 4

      They put their ice cream and other products in that handy single serving container and they say it has four servings!

      Or the twenty oz Coke bottles, Servings per container: 2.5.

    • *sigh* I wish. Two words: Natural flavors.

      One word: Spices

      Drives me nuts. Its just a sneaky way of disguising their use of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG).
      • Actually use of MSG in a food product sold in the U.S. has to be disclosed, its a chemical...not really a "spice" or "natural flavor". It would technically fit under the label "Artificial Flavors" but since some people are violently alergic to it the law requires it to be put on the label. Even if it wasn't the law, companies would just be setting themselves up for lawsuits if they didn't.
    • Four words: Natural and artificial flavoring. [google.com]

      Doesn't that cover the entire range of anything that might be construed as having "flavor"?

  • Generic Methodology (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drakethegreat ( 832715 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:29AM (#14578732) Homepage
    It seems to me that this stupid thinking could be applied to a lot of things. Like what about all those Disney movies that had inside jokes and pranks that were dirty. What about if we sued Leonardo Davinci because of The Last Supper.

    Why should any company be held responsible for the actions of a few individuals? Imagine if record labels got sued because of the things that their artists say in their songs. All of these things might not be quite the same thing but they related enough to show that thinking like this only damages a society.

    So it seems to me that another idiot jumped on the band wagon of attacking the video game industry because its been in the news and it seemed like the cool thing to do if you want to create a lawsuit and attempt to generate money for a city thats lacking the funds to maintain its infastructure.

  • Not a big deal (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Psmylie ( 169236 ) * on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:30AM (#14578740) Homepage
    It's funny how the media and certain high-profile figures make this seem like such a huge deal, as if Rockstar/Take-two was giving away free GTA:SA disks at Elementary schools across America. We all know that the Hot Coffee scenes took some time and skill to uncover, and though the patch itself was easy enough to apply, it still took some effort to go out and find it. It's not like the sex scenes were sitting there waiting for a cheat code to be entered or anything.

    And the "sex scenes" themselves were comical, to say the least. First of all, CJ was fully clothed. No penetration or genitalia were shown. At worst, it was full frontal nudity with sexual situations, which would have earned a movie an R rating. The original "M for Mature" was still consistent with the content, in my opinion.

    I'm not defending these guys... That content should have been removed prior to the game's release. They really were stupid about it. But it's not like "the children" were exposed to some horrific pornography in an "E for Everyone" game or anything like that.

  • Come on.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AgentAce ( 246327 )
    Is this when we see a dozen other law firms file law suits against all major software houses for not disclosing any other "easter egg" during the past 10 years?

    Give me a break. I'll pass on the kit-kat.
    • It wasn't an easter egg. The scene was removed. Problem is that it was removed poorly (i.e., by changing some options which effectively made the compiled and working code inaccessible through normal means).

      I think Rockstar is on good footing. If the Hot Coffee mod violates the EULA in any way, then they can argue that when used properly, the game does indeed fall under the MA rating and that the game is exactly what they claim it is. The game is indeed MA when as long as you don't go out, find the mod
      • But doesn't applying the patch/hack/whatever to access said "Hot Coffee" in violation of the DCMA?

        Or is the DCMA conveniently forgotten since there's huge bucks to go after here?

        I still am astounded how much hoopla this one little minigame in a game has received. If this game sold poorly, nobody would care. No ambulance-chasing lawyers would get any millions out of it.
        • Is changing a savegame file "circumventing a technical measure for copy protection"?

  • LA is run by idiots (Score:3, Informative)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:45AM (#14578893)
    This Rocky Delgadillo is the same guy that helped ban lap dances in Los Angeles County because city bureaucrats know best what two consenting adults should do on private property. A bigger bunch of complete tools you'd be hard pressed to find. They are proof that Democrats can be morals imposing dickheads just as much as anyone.

    Delgadillo also opposes the police enforcing immigration law because he's bought and sold by local business interests who want the cheap labor.

  • TFA just left me confused... (Score:3, Informative)

    by PsychosisC ( 620748 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:49AM (#14578934)
    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_coffee [wikipedia.org]

    The Hot Coffee mod is a mod created for the personal computer port of the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA:SA, 2004/2005, Rockstar North). When installed, it unlocks a hidden part of the game which involves having sex (featuring oral sex with an "invisible" penis and dry humping) with the main character's girlfriend to try to improve the relationship between the two.
  • What's a "cofee"?

  • Beverage Preferences & Political Litigation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Wanderer1 ( 47145 ) * <wanderer1&pobox,com> on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:56AM (#14579024)
    I prefer to sue over tea myself.
    But will Rockstar be able to recover damages if they can prove that the city attorney is filing a frivolous lawsuit?

    On technological merits, as has been discussed before, being able to manipulate the game engine into performing activity that was not originally intended seems out of scope of liability for the manufacturer. It's a bit like suing gun manufacturers for vicarious liability. I understand that this code exists in the product, but I do not understand to what lengths the users had to go through to expose it. Which would seem to be the crux of the argument against Rockstar.

  • What is this about? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:19AM (#14579267) Homepage
    I read the article and I read the comments, but I still don't exactly understand what this is about. Can somebody enlighten me? What exactly is the infamous hot coffee sequence? I take it it has something to do with nudity or sex?
    • In GTA: San Andreas, there is a mini game where you have to court a lady. When you do enough things, she asks you inside for some hot coffee. In the game that was released all you see is the house shaking and sounds of them having sex. In one of the hot coffee mod the scene changes so you can see what is inside, they are fully clothed and they are "hugging" in various positions, nothing more than you would see at 9 pm on Fox, in fact probably less stuff. In yet another mod, they are naked, and doing the men

  • Indigo Prophecy... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nevergleam ( 900375 )
    My roommate just finished playing Indigo Prophecy, and that game had a lot more adult situations right in the intended story of the game. As of yet, I have heard no big-time lawyer complaining about that game not being rated AO. (Indigo Prophecy was a really cool game actually).

    Based on GTA's popularity versus Indigo Prophecy's popularity, I would argue that anti-gaming legislators are just looking for some more headline space to boost their political stance rather than honestly wanting to make any meaningf
  • Why isn't there a big uproar regarding the Sims 2 no censor patches that are available?

    Hell, you can even get re-skins that add anatomically correct genetalia to the Sims and a nudity patch that can be used to make your Sims run around naked all the time.

    The no-censor patch is pretty much the same as the Hot Coffee issue. ie: both patches simply unlock images already contained in the shipping game.

    The re-skins are a different issue, since they actually replace the "barbie doll" style nudes that ship with t
    • >The whole "Hot Coffee" debacle is a crock of shit. If Sims 2 was as popular as GTA:SA, I'm sure we'd be reading about suing Maxis over the decensor patch instead. But since it's not, there isn't an uproar.

      Sims 2 may not be as popular as SA, but it's still awfully popular (like, what was it, a million copies in the first 10 days, compared to SA's 2 million or something?).. as far as I can tell the only real major distinguishing factor between the two is that Sims doesn't *already* have a big crowd lining
  • Can you imagine if this held how liable companies like Microsoft would be? Forcing them to disclose the content of all Microsoft operating system nuances and 'hidden' features that were not fully disclosed?

  • What about "bordellos"? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Skowronek ( 795408 ) <skylark@unaligne ... org minus distro> on Friday January 27, 2006 @02:20PM (#14581730) Homepage
    In fact, in GTA:SA with a set of cheats and quite a bit of skill, you can uncover several (I know of two) partially-furnished, somewhat-non-solid bordellos. R* left them in the game because, well, it wasn't worth to cut them. I think this points in the direction of Hot Coffee being a similar left-over.

  • Not their fault (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Scott Swezey ( 678347 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @02:58PM (#14582202) Homepage
    Let's think about this for a moment... Why should they be responsible for what someone else did to their product? The license agreements and such probably even specifically stated that you couldn't mod it, reverse engineer it, etc.

    But hey, let's sue some bleach company because some stupid idiot mixed it with vinegar.
    • Let's think about this for a moment... Why should they be responsible for what someone else did to their product? The license agreements and such probably even specifically stated that you couldn't mod it, reverse engineer it, etc.

      Doesn't matter. Whether it was locked out or not, Rockstar still distributed the content, something they did their best to hide before and after the Hot Coffee mod came out, until it was too late. What a huge way to drop the ball.

      • Doesn't matter.

        I disagree, but I guess that is for the courts to decide. And either way, I stand by Rockstar and believe that they did not make the contents of the "Hot Coffee" mod available to anyone who bought the game. Some ToU/license violating moron opened it up to the world and made it available, not Rockstar.

        Oooo, What is this little moisture absorbing packet in my medication...??! "Do." "not." "eat." *Eat's it anyway while blogging it and showing the world, some news channel rips it off, puts it

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