GTA maker coughs up $20m for 'hot coffee' sex

Final8y

Final8y

Final8y

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Take-Two Interactive will shuffle $20 million out the door to make its "hot coffee" headaches go away.

The game publisher said Wednesday it has settled a longstanding class-action shareholder lawsuit over an infamous sex scene squirreled away in the code of Grand Theft Auto: San Andres. Take-Two will stuff $20,115,000 into a settlement fund for members of the class-action suit. The company's insurance carriers will pay $15,200,000 of the settlement, and Take-Two will foot the rest.

The lawsuit stems from a normally inaccessible sex minigame in GTA:SA that's initiated when the game's protagonist is invited into his girlfriend's house for a cup of "hot coffee." Said offer of joe inevitably leads to a somewhat explicit virtual bootknocking, which beget several years of angry parents, grandstanding politicians, and disgruntled shareholders.

While the sex minigame itself cannot be activated in the game proper, a hack to unlock the scene was discovered and circulated on the net in the summer of 2005, nearly a year after the game was released. When word of the blue content spread, Take-Two first claimed it was created entirely by hackers – only later to admit the scene had inadvertently been left in the game's code by its developers at Rockstar Games.

The subsequent uproar over a sex scene (hidden within the notoriously violent video game) led to the Entertainment Software Rating Board revoking the game's "M for Mature" rating and slapping it with an "Adults Only" score – a kiss of death in the US market. The game watchdog then declared game makers would henceforth be required to document all hidden and inaccessible content during the ratings process.

Take-Two then spent tens of millions of dollars pulling existing copies off store shelves and replacing them with "hot coffee"-free versions. The recall loss lead to Take-Two's stock plunging, prompting investors to sue over the company's questionable statements made during the outbreak of the controversy.

"We are pleased to have reached this settlement, which represents another important step forward for the Company," said Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, in a statement.

In addition to more class-action lawsuits hounding Take-Two to this day, the "hot coffee" scandal also served as a platform for politicians like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman to propose legislation that would regulate the sale of mature games to minors.

So remember, kids: Always stick to nicking cars and popping caps in innocent pedestrians. Sex is about $20m too expensive. ®
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/take_two_settles_investor_class_action_lawsuit/
 
I may have missed the point but the game is rated M which is 17 years and above? Whats the problem?

Oh my!! My 13 year old kid has seen rudies in a rated M game....eerrrrrrrr! nevermind!

Weirdo-O-rama! :o
 
so shooting and bludgeoning and TAKING life is deemed fine but sex i.e. MAKING life is frowned upon.

I have never understood this. Why such a taboo on sex is raised but violence,murder e.t.c. are all ok?
 
Jono8 said:
so shooting and bludgeoning and TAKING life is deemed fine but sex i.e. MAKING life is frowned upon.

I have never understood this. Why such a taboo on sex is raised but violence,murder e.t.c. are all ok?
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No idea, but it really grinds me gears if I think about it much, it's just so illogical.
 
Dano said:
No idea, but it really grinds me gears if I think about it much, it's just so illogical.
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It really annoys me to. Especially as sex is perfectly legal , yet almost every other thing you can do in GTA is totally Illegal.

The mind boggles.

+ its an 18/ R rated game anyway :confused:
 
Ghost-Reaper said:
what about gta4 with the prostitutes in the car...
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exactly. and they talk absolutely filth too. no innuendo, they actually say stuff like "**** me harder". :p

and the c word is used in a few cut scenes too. and have you met eddie (one of the pedestrians?) sick mofo he is. :D

this is totally pathetic and it's a shame to see them cough up. but then 20m is pocket change anyway.
 
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I have GTAIV on PC and it runs fairly well but barely played it, got an xbox pad too. Dno why it didn't grip me like the previous games :(
 
Thorpy said:
I have GTAIV on PC and it runs fairly well but barely played it, got an xbox pad too. Dno why it didn't grip me like the previous games :(
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what! :mad: keyboard + mouse = :cool:

oh it runs like a bag of poo on my pc. see sig (yes that's a single core celeron). but i still finished it. :D
 
What a stupid crazy place we all live in.

You can take somebodys head off with blood gurgling all over the place, but sex omg AHGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH think of the children
 
marc2003 said:
what! :mad: keyboard + mouse = :cool:

oh it runs like a bag of poo on my pc. see sig (yes that's a single core celeron). but i still finished it. :D
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Hahahah well the PS2 pad donned the GTA franchise, not sure about a M and K setup :p
 
Jono8 said:
so shooting and bludgeoning and TAKING life is deemed fine but sex i.e. MAKING life is frowned upon.

I have never understood this. Why such a taboo on sex is raised but violence,murder e.t.c. are all ok?
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Thats about right.

Look at the film Clerks. MPAA wanted to rate it as NC17 initially - for language. No sex in it, no violence, no blood, guts and gore... Just the language.

The uproar about Janet Jacksons nipple appearing on tv shows how uptight they are about the human body. Real corpses being shown on tv are absolutely fine though.

Films full of peoples limbs being hacked off with chainsaws and axes for no apparent reason, fine - R rating for you. But, you want to show a ladies front bottom for half a second on film - thats a NC17 immediately.

America has a hell of a lot of problems. Although, part of it is because a fair chunk of American citizens are descended from the puritans. Robin Williams put it perfectly - a group of people so stuck up that even the British didn't want them. :D

I'm not a fan - you can tell. ;)
 
A lot of people just like moaning and bandwagoning for the sake of it. I doubt it really had anything to do with the sex scene, more so the fact it was hidden or/and left in by accident. I bet if they had released the game and stated there was a sex scene in, some people would have a grumble like they always do but then it'd just go away.
 
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