Take-Two $20 million Hot Coffee settlement

Ack, alright I know this is a small amount of money for Take-Two, I also realise that stupid American lawsuits are hardly news. Still, this case exemplifies so much of the hypocrisy over sex and violence, as well videogames and other media that it does rile me up.

Take-two have come to a $20 million settlement in the lawsuit over the 'Hot Coffee' mod that was buried in the GTA: San Andreas code a few years ago. The basis of the controversy was that the game contained a sexual mini-game which was hidden from censors allowing the game to get a 'Mature' rating, rather than the less financially viable 'Adults Only' rating it recieved upon discovery. Apparently this was consumer fraud, and the deception exposed young children to this scarring imagery.

In reality, the mini-game consisted of fully clothed 'sex' between blocky characters which, although hardly a massive deal in itself, might cause reasonable concern if sold to children. Of course the fact that a mature rating puts the game in a recommended 17+ age bracket, meaning the people supposed to play it will usually be legally allowed to have sex themselves (fully undressed) slightly undermines that. More importantly, the mini-game was actually only availably by hacking the game. This meant that real effort had to be taken on the part of the user to access it, as well as using the game in a way unintended in its release form.

The real hypocrisy though comes firstly in the fact that this sort of imagery would be seen in mature rated films all the time, and a lot more graphically. Video games are still coming into their own in the mainstream community, and can get a lot more abuse than they should from certain areas. Secondly, the game the ratings board gave a mature rating to allowed players to drive around a city killing, drug dealing and stealing to their hearts content. Apparently its okay for 'kids' to be hacking up prostitutes with a chainsaw and a machine gun in a videogame, but consensual (fully clothed) sex is really something they should be protected from. Regardless of how relatively little $20 million is to Take-Two, its $20 million too much to pay for idiotic guardians who want their kids to be able to kill, mutilate and steal without the fear of them seeing people being too nice to each other.

South Park's Good Times With Weapons makes this point far better than I ever could. Its an old debate, but its one of those ones that really gets on my nerves.