Cast your minds back to 2005 and the days of PS2 and you should remember the now legendary Hot Coffee scandal which involved a 'modded' copy of GTA: San Andreas and people having sex. Really.
Now it looks to have finally been settled. A quite a price. Here's the PR:
Under the proposed settlement, the class action will be dismissed in exchange for an aggregate payment of $20,115,000 into a settlement fund for the benefit of class members, of which $15,200,000 will be paid by the Company's insurance carriers, and $4,915,000 will be paid by the Company. Take-Two fully accrued for its portion of the settlement costs over several quarters ended April 30, 2009.
The Company also agreed to supplement the substantial changes that it has already implemented in its corporate governance policies and practices. The settlement is subject to the completion of final documentation and preliminary and final approval by the Court.
"We are pleased to have reached this settlement, which represents another important step forward for the Company," said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two."
See, I never understood why this was an issue. It requires an actual hack to work. A third party piece of code. So the fact it was included is sort of irrelevant - it already had the mature rating - and nobody could see it by default in the shipped version.
It'd be like modifying a car and then complaining to the manufacturer that your nitrous fired you into a tree.
I like the fact that Take 2 poke fun at this in GTA IV when there is a poster in the window of the internet cafe that says "Hot Coffee Available here". I not sure how this is that big an issue, especially as kids can walk into any paper shop and see porn mags on the top shelf everyday! The bottom line is anyone under 18 shouldn't be playing the game and anyone over 18 who is bothered by it is just looking for something to complain about and try make some money out of it. (and as someone said, don't hack the game and you won't have and issue).
The US of A-holes, sure is the land of opportunity. Did anyone die because of the mod? Did anyone lose their life savings? Companies get fined less for mass corporate manslaughter, or for swindling people out of their pensions. In the words of Peter Andre, "It's insania!".
At the risk of sounding like a pervert I enjoyed the hot coffee mod. The girlfriend thing was boring before but giving your girlfriend a good "button pressing" was kind of funny!
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