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Take Two Investigated by New York Grand Jury

Posted by Zonk on Thu Jun 29, 2006 12:15 PM
from the they-switched-to-tea dept.
Government The Courts News Entertainment Games
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."
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[+] Games: FTC and Rockstar Settle Hot Coffee Dispute 295 comments
kukyfrope writes "The FTC and Rockstar/Take-Two have reached a settlement surrounding the 'Hot Coffee' mod for GTA: San Andreas that will serve to prevent future incidents. The FTC has stated that Rockstar and Take-Two must disclose all content to the ESRB when rating games, or face an $11,000 fine per violation if undisclosed content is discovered. 'Parents have the right to rely on the accuracy of the entertainment rating system. We allege that Take-Two and Rockstar's actions undermined the industry's own rating system and deceived consumers,' commented Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection."
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Take Two Investigated by New York Grand Jury 50 Comments More /

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  • Here's another shocker: They probably wanted it to be discovered for the publicity... but they probably figured it would stay an underground thing. They apparently forgot that it's 2006 and people now spend way too much time "thinking of the children". Back in the day, games would have full on hidden swear words, etc. hidden in there, and it never made the news or whatever. Heck, who hasn't been to an arcade and seen some creatively NC-17 vulgarities on the high score boards?
    • Who could have thought anyone would object to clothes-on softcore adult material in a game rated M ("for Mature")?

      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?
      • Ok.

        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

    • accident maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by alphaseven (540122) on Thursday June 29 2006, @01:02PM (#15629383)
      It's entirely possible it was left in accidently, people with hex editors find stuff left over from earlier builds all the time in games. For example, Bioware got criticism for Kotor II when people found dialogue from a more elaborate ending left in the game (suggesting the game was rushed) and a Japanese preview demo for the game Xenosaga III accidently included all the dialogue for the game. Those weren't Easter Eggs, that was stuff that the companies wished they hadn't released.

      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.
    • The last time I spent money in a coin-op arcade, they were still using initials on the high score boards. It's pretty hard to fit an NC-17 vulgarity into 3 letters. Of course, that was back in the day. I don't remember any hidden swear words either. Maybe my memory is just going bad in my old age.

      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

      • The parents that don't want their kids exposed to nudity have every reason to be upset.

        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!

      • 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

      • Oh please - I use the initials "ASS" every chance I get.

      • What nudity? Hot Coffee does not contain any. What are you talking about?

  • not just hot coffee... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by freshman_a (136603) on Thursday June 29 2006, @12:24PM (#15628943) Homepage Journal
    1up.com [1up.com] had a little more detail on the "other issues" -

    New York's District Attorney is looking for information covering a number of issues, including knowledge of company officers and directors regarding the Hot Coffee's development and subsequent failure to remove from the shipped game; the game's submission to the ESRB and any admissions to Hot Coffee (or lack thereof, really); disclosures and presentations of acquisitions, partnering arrangements and earnings results; invoices from, payments to, and termination of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and retention of Ernst & Young LLP; acquisitions in 2005; certain compensation and human resources documents; and documents concerning the board of directors and committees.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      TakeTwo was already delisted once (temporarily) for financial irregularities (misreporting of quarterly financials over a two-year period). The Hot Coffee part of the subpoena is likely just to bring attention to the rest of the grand jury stuff -- the NY DA plays the media like a violin sometimes -- Spitzer for Governor, anyone? There's a reason RB resigned as President & from the Board of Directors of Take-two, to stay on in an advisory role.

      Any conviction, or near-conviction, opens up the possibli
    • earnings results

      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)

    by TheRequiem13 (978749) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {meiuqereht}> on Thursday June 29 2006, @12:31PM (#15629019)
    The documents Take Two hands over will have pictures of supreme court judges fornicating on every page, drawn in invisible ink on top of the boring Memos.
  • I highly doubt the Directors or Officers of Take Two said "Gee lets insert some Sex Scenes in the game !!"

    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" ?

    • They probably did say "let's add a sex minigame" but then they considered how much that freaks those Americans out so they decided to remove it again.
    • From my experience in the dev world, easter eggs are usually created near the end of the development cycle. This is when you've had an entire team coding like mad for months, then tell all but five (or two) of them to stop as (nearly) all the features are in and a few critical bugs need to be taken care of. The managers are still to busy with the current release to give a new project to the programmers waiting in the wings, and with their boredom they start coding... easter eggs.
  • I'm also sure that this coming within meer months of an election is purely coincidental...nothing like a good porn in otherwise respectable video games story to bring out the best in people.

    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...)

  • A Barbie game has similar - but never found (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I spoke with developers of one of the earlier Barbie games and they talked about what incredible drunken fun it was to have access to 3D models of Barbie and her Horse - and indicated that hidden in one of the games in an intresting "scene" (in the bondage sense of the word) that they expect noone will ever find.


    Should they get in trouble too?

    • the alleged content is totally age-inappropriate and should not be in the consumer package. they can put all the hacksmut they want on the development server hidden deep in the bowels of the office, but if any of it gets out on releases, it should be declared.

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2006, @01:11PM (#15629508)
    The stupid thing is that the ESRB's M rating is supposed to be equivalent to the MPAA's R rating. The AO rating is supposed to be equivalent to an NC-17 (or worse) rating.

    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.
    • The problem is that computer games are still seen as an activity for children, despite what the ESA has said [theesa.com] based on their research. Therefore, any violations are judged much more harshly and it's easier for accusations of obscenity find a willing audience. After all, it's all impressionable 13-year olds watching Hot Coffee, not 33 year olds able to handle content that's less racy than what you find on premium cable channels.

      Unfortunately, there's not much to be done to change opinions. We'll have to wa
  • The game had the appropriate rating of "Mature" from the very beginning. The hot coffee mod should not have changed that. Yes, they may have witheld hidden game content from the ESRB, but it was not content that was a) accessible through normal play b) content that would make it an AO game. I'm not a lawyer, but I think rationally. I wish these people would too.
  • Is it just me or do other people find it ridiculous that with all the problems going on in the world, that a video game company is being taken to court over a hidden/unfinished and unaccessible (unless hacked) portion of the game that depicts sexual activity between two polygonal objects?

    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)

    by LordZardoz (155141) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:44AM (#15635456)
    Having not seen the cheat in action, I cannot be certain.

    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
    • Umm have you see the hot coffee mod? Its unfinished work. Obviously scraped from development early on.
    • You make a some really good points about what they were probably doing. But why is the government involved?

      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
      • But why is the government involved?

        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.
        • It is a subpeona for evidence relating to what they knew about the mod and how it was disclosed to the ESRB. Companies that put games up for ESRB ratings essentially sign a contract and agree to disclosure.

          This would be a valid point if the ESRB were suing TTWO for breach of contract.

    • Re:Bravo, I say (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Thursday June 29 2006, @12:45PM (#15629170) Homepage Journal
      The problem I have with your argument is that it would take kids less effort to locate and download some hardcore porn than it does for them to locate, download, and apply this patch. (Not that it's hard, but it's 50% more steps) :) There's no way to unlock this content with any official product/download. If they offered a patch to enable hot coffee, then I'd agree with you. They didn't.
      • And.... it's animated porn. It's not even real porn. It's a couple animated characters having animated sex. Can that poissibly be more harmful than real porn? Aren't kids already supposed to know the difference between real and make-believe? (Not that kids should have been playing an adult game anyways)
    • ... the potentiality of parents letting their children play.

      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)

      by vertinox (846076) on Thursday June 29 2006, @01:10PM (#15629496)
      Take Two and Rockstar should have known the possible consequences of what they were doing.

      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.
      • 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.

        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
        • If you think you can keep track of everything that has been added to and/or removed from code that is being worked on by a team of programmers for years. You obviously never worked on a big project like this. There is way to much going into these games and being pulled out of these games to keep track of everything on every build.

          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
        • I think it was somewhere in the middle. The programmers probably realized that enterprising individuals would find the content. They simply didn't expect the level or public backlash it would generate.

          The moral of the story? Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

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