Take Two Investigated by New York Grand Jury 65
cjm182 writes "Over a year after the infamous sex minigame (aka Hot Coffee) was found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the New York District Attorney's office has subpoenaed Take Two Interactive and its subsidiary, Rockstar Games. Reuters reports that a grand jury requested documents relating to 'company officers' and directors' knowledge about the creation and inclusion of the 'Hot Coffee' minigame. This marks the first time Take Two has been asked to provide documents directly relating to the incident. Last week, GamePolitics.com ran an editorial calling for the U.S. Congress to subpoena Take Two directly, rather than criticize the FTC and the ESRB over the incident."
shocker: people knew (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Functionally Uncritical Commenting Kibosh (Score:2)
It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between a user who merely has different values, views, or ideas, and a user who is intentionally trolling
You know its possible to do both at the same time, right? Just look at all the George Bush fanbois.
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:3, Insightful)
A few days ago I watched a South Park episode called "Fun With Weapons" where the kids accidentally hurt someone with their real weapons, but get in trouble because one of the appears naked in public.
But hey, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
Another stab at it (Score:2)
Let's say you buy a car. A domestic car.
It's a good car, does what it's advertised, etc. You don't have any complaints.
But then you get on the intarweb, and you find out that inside the door is a bunch of pornography. And that you need a special screwdriver to open the door to find out that the inside of the door is a bunch of low-resolution pornography. You can't get to it, unless you take apart the door with a special tool that's not commonly available, but is easily created/duplicated once discovered
Re:Another stab at it (Score:2)
Re:Another stab at it (Score:2)
accident maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)
On a related note, I read an interview with the people behind Indigo Prophecy were they said they had to take extra care to make sure none of the code for the uncensored European release was in the American version. Normally you would could REM out some code but because of the Hot Coffee incident they had to make a more thorough audit of the code.
Even though I think this got blown way out of proportion, I'm very curious to what really happened.
Re:accident maybe? (Score:2)
Re:accident maybe? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course all of that is beside the point. What it boils down to is that parents like ratings. It lets them quickly identify products that they do not consider suitable for their children. Even more than parents li
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:2)
You're absolutely correct. They can get *upset*. The problem is that they also get *litigious*. What happened to good old fashioned "getting mad and dealing with it?" Why must other people suffer everytime some idiot gets upset these days? There is no constitutional guarantee that nothing will offend or upset you!
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:2)
You make an important point, and certainly one that gets little respect in the Libertarian-heavy /. crowd. However, the real issue is that the whole issue of parenting has become political in a sense that your comment is fairly naive about. The problem in the public eye is not the sensible one that you pointed out (that parents should know, when buying a game for their children, whether there are pixellated boobies in it), it is rather that the big, bad porngraphers...ahem I mean game designers are corrupt
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:2)
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:1)
What's offensive about donkeys?
Re:shocker: people knew (Score:1)
not just hot coffee... (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm reading that right, I think the Hot Coffee mod should be the least of their worries. The mod may not be a good thing, but the other stuff looks like it has the potential for worse legal repercussions.
Re:not just hot coffee... (Score:1, Interesting)
Any conviction, or near-conviction, opens up the possibli
Re:not just hot coffee... (Score:2)
There's the real reason this is happening, right there. Because of Hot Coffee, the shareholders made less money in dividends that quarter than they thought they would from such a guaranteed mega-hit. In any other environment it would be a case of "you gambled, you lost. Boo fucking hoo." But because Wall Street is involved, Reginald Ffat-Cat and his corporate friends get to call in the lawyers to compensate them for their 'loss' - ie, not making as much profit as they were expecting.
Look Deeper (Score:4, Funny)
combine the cases in north dakota (Score:2)
he may not know pornography, but he'll know what he likes.
Re:Look Deeper (Score:1)
Uncertainty is the last thing their case needs. IANAL but any Lawyer can tell you that.
Childishness will be the last thing on their mind. Remember this is Puritan America 2006.
Kind of what would you do if you were in their shoes?
You sure wouldn't try to hide any silly messages, would you? I sure as hell wouldn't!
Our courts are not known for their humour (but for being laughed at).
Understanding that will keep you out of tr
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:2)
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:1)
The ESRB is "a non-profit self regulatory body that independently assigns ratings". The quote is from their website. How does that in any way have anything to do with the government? Why is legal action being taken against a company based on a private companies recommendations?
That's the problem with this situation as a whole. It's not whether the content was or was not in the it's why is the gove
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:2)
This would be a valid point if the ESRB were suing TTWO for breach of contract.
Because Take Two is publicly traded ... (Score:2)
Because Take Two is a publicly traded company. It is not just the ESRB and game buyers who may have been defrauded. The Take Two *investors* may have been defrauded as well, they were not aware of all risks that the company was taking. Assuming of course the scene was left in intentionally.
The rules are very different when you have the public finance your business.
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:2)
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:3, Insightful)
I would think that this "potentiality" should be very very close to zero anyway.
Then, lo and behold, there's a whole bunch of D and E hidden in the game that was never advertised, and it was pretty simple for their little angel to find that hidden content.
AFAIK, the "hot coffee" content was not so easily enabled. So I highly doubt anyone's "little angel" unknowningly stumbled upon the objectionable content. This is especially true for the PS2 vers
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. It would be like a construction working putting pin ups of Playboy or Hustler between the drywall and insulation and then you finding it 5 years lader when you are knocking down a wall.
I mean the construction work is at fault, but is the company who did it really to blame? Unless the contractor foreman sat there and watched the guy do it, then you can't really blame the company with anything other than poor managment.
Its not like it is company policy or a design issue to do these things.
It may have been an oversite... Like during construction one of the workers was making obscene woodcarvings in the studs of the house (no pun intended) and the foreman comes over and says "Hey you can't put that there! Get rid of it!" and instead of removing the studs with the obscene word carvings, the construction worker puts drywall over it to save himself time.
That is most likley what happened with hot coffee. The programmers put it in there thinking it would be cool and the manager says "Guys we can't have this in game! we'll get an AO rating!" and the programmers just wall it up like the lazy construction worker since it would require more effort to hunt down and remove all the code than just remove its accessbility.
Still... We shouldn't be wasting tax money over this issue in persuing selective morality in the courts. We want ethics in our courts so it would be best suited to going after Take Two's alledged fraud.
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:2)
There are so many things that can happen to let things slip through that you didn't want in the game
- It could have been completely removed at one point and accidentally reintro
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:2)
The moral of the story? Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
Re:Bravo, I say (Score:2)
Not likely. It was probably at one point a feature, and then someone thought better of it and axed it. Do you really think that it was just one guy working on this? At the very least, you've got the programmer coding it, and the artist doing the animations. A coordinated
Who Knows ? (Score:2, Funny)
Then again with how hard the programmers are usually pushed for deadlines, when would they have time on their own to insert a "side quest" ?
Re:Who Knows ? (Score:1)
Actually... (Score:1)
Timing is everything (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember, not only do we "Think of the Children"(TM), we remind you early and often!
(Sure, district attorneys are appointed, but someone's going to pull this out in a commercial plug...)
Re:Timing is everything (Score:2)
Rockstar screwed this up pretty bad but, getting Congress involved? That's just election year muck raking.
Re:Timing is everything (Score:1)
Reference the NY State Constitution, Article V, Section 1.
Link (you have to do a bunch of clicking, no direct link):
http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menuf.cgi [state.ny.us]
Re:Timing is everything (Score:2)
However, I'm definatly not discounting that someone (possibly even Spitzer) will use this to score parental votes.
Re:Timing is everything (Score:2)
Re:Timing is everything (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=new+york+dist rict+attorney+elected&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]
A Barbie game has similar - but never found (Score:1, Interesting)
Should they get in trouble too?
yes (Score:1, Troll)
the way to settle this for ever is the ratings outfits to actually review the stuff they shuffle papers over, and employ a few of the 1337 to search for easter eggs... or in this case, perhaps, easter pornos... and if any are found, the product will r
The dumb thing is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Hot Coffee scenes are not NC-17 material, they're R material. There's no wang, there's low quality pixelated boobs, etc. If you've seen any good sex/violence R movies, you've seen worse than Hot Coffee. So either the rating system needs to be addressed or there's a double standard between video games and movies.
I'm all for Take Two getting in trouble for not removing unused questionable content, however crucifying them for what should be a rerating from M to M is getting out of hand. Of course, the ESRB went with the flow and rerated the game to AO.
Re:The dumb thing is.... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, there's not much to be done to change opinions. We'll have to wa
I don't see the problem (Score:2)
Rules different when publicly traded ... (Score:2)
The real problem here is that Take Two is a publicly traded company.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=TTWO&t=2y&l=on&z= m &q=l&c= [yahoo.com]
The rules are very different when you have the public finance your business. You are legally obligated to inform investors of risks. With this in mind it is entirely reasonable to investigate whether the scene was an accident or a marketing gimmick.
Re:Rules different when publicly traded ... (Score:2)
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:2)
I cannot comprehend how the 'Hot Coffee' mod is even an issue.
The game allows you to pick up hookers, and then kill them. For this there is no problem, but 'showing' the guy having sex is a problem.
Of which there is nothing to see anyway.
I can kind of understand the ERSB having an issue as it is very embarrassing for them and does reflect badly on their processes and procedures. I realize the code shouldn't have been executable, but it still made them look bad.
It looks to me like someone wants to make sure
Priorities? (Score:1)
Not to mention that there was no lawsuit when the rest of the game involves shooting, beating, and killing other people using numerous methods. Rewarding illegal activity and portraying violence with utmost graphical exu
It was probably a cut feature (Score:3, Informative)
I would guess that the sex game was a full feature for quite a while that was essentially cut do to legal liability. It is very possible that it was cut very late in development. Plenty of games ship with assets on the install disks that are not used by the final product.
This in turn would mean that the feature probably shows up as a feature in a design document somewhere. Take 2, being the publisher, probably has internal documentation debating keeping or cutting the feature, and quite possible a document that ultimately telling the developers to cut it.
Being late in development, the hooks to trigger the missions were probably just removed at a script level. And that would result in the possibility of someone restoring a few lines of game script to re-enable the code.
In any event, I dont see the big deal about this.
END COMMUNICATION
Ancient history (Score:1)