NEW YORK (AP) -- A woman upset that she bought the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for her 14-year-old grandson without knowing it contained hidden, sexually explicit scenes sued the manufacturer Wednesday on behalf of consumers nationwide.

 

Florence Cohen, 85, of New York, said in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the game's manufacturer, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software Inc., engaged in false, misleading and deceptive practices.

 

She sought unspecified damages on behalf of herself and all consumers nationwide, saying the company should give up its profits from the game for what amounted to false advertising, consumer deception and unfair business practices.

 

Cohen said in the suit that she bought the game in late 2004 for her grandson when it was rated "M" for mature, for players 17 and older. According to the suit, she directed that it be taken away from her grandson, which was done.

 

The game was released in October with an "M" rating. After a storm of negative publicity about the hidden scenes, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, an industry group responsible for rating games, changed the rating to "AO" for adults only.

 

Laurence D. Paskowitz, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Cohen, said no parent would knowingly buy an adult-only video game for their children.

 

"They should really make sure this doesn't happen again," he said. "The least this company can do is offer refunds."

 

Hidden areas in video games that can be unlocked with special codes or modifications are not uncommon.

 

Take Two Interactive initially said the scenes were not part of the retail version of the game but later admitted they were.

 

A message left for a company spokesman was not immediately returned. On Tuesday, Take-Two announced that it had been notified by the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Advertising Practices that it was conducting an inquiry into the game's advertising claims.

 

The company said it planned to cooperate fully with the probe.

 

"Rockstar Games and Take Two Interactive regret that consumers may have been exposed to content that was not intended to be accessible in the playable version of 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'," it said in a statement.

 

The company said it had halted production of the game in the controversial form and was working on a version of the game without the hidden sexual content.

 

"Going forward, the company will refine the process by which it edits games and will enhance the protection of its game code to prevent such future modifications," it said.

 

Earlier this week, the House voted 355-21 for a resolution asking the FTC to investigate the company. Last week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, asked the FTC to investigate Rockstar, saying the company had "gamed the ratings system" by concealing sex scenes in the game that can be unlocked by computer programs available on the Internet.

 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., Best Buy Co. and Circuit City Stores Inc. have pulled the game -- last year's top-seller among console games -- from their shelves following the rating change.

 

 

 

What a stupid fucking cow. You bought a MATURE RATED game for your 14 year old grandson but now that there's a patch that lets him see boobies while he's shooting cops and carjacking, now he's scarred for life.

 

Fuck these people, and fuck the fact she'll probably win this suit because no one over 35 understands video games.

At one point did she miss the 17+ under that big M on the box? This is why video games will never win. Even with the ratings system parents still ignore because they think it's Super Mario Bros.

Not to mention the judges/juries deciding cases like these have absolutely no idea about anything game related short of Atari and/or NES.

 

You try to explain the sex stuff in GTA was only accessable via a hacked patch and their eyes roll back in their heads.

How can you sue someone because you chose to ignore the ratings system? She bought the game, she chose to ignore the rating, she paid her cash, she gave it to her grandson, she'as responsible. Shit, how hard is this to add up? Even if Rockstar had kept the sex in the game, most 17 year olds are already getting laid these days so what's the big deal?

The scene in question can be found here: http://gorillamask.net/gtasex.shtml

I think you might be surprised by the result. These lawsuits have never gained traction to this point. I think once Rockstar gets there points out the game is 17+ and bought for a 14 year old they'll easily win.

 

But thank God this concerns Hillary Clinton and Chucky Schumer. I'm soooo glad that they aren't wasting their time on national security or something silly like that.

I'm shocked Rick "Man on Dog Sex" Santorum hasn't chimed in yet. He's ignoring his post of Moral Arbiter of America.

 

What's aggrivating to me is at the core, the anti-game people are essentially correct: The sex content shouldn't have ever made it in the finished product.

 

The fact that the content wasn't accessable without a third party hacked patch doesn't mean anything to these people since they don't understand what all that hoobajoo means.

Well..... these are the same people that thought Doom was still a widely played game when Columbine happened. This is one of the side effects though of having a bunch of old people in government. Most are still living in the late 70s, early 80s technology wise.

 

And as far as Schumer and Clinto goes. It's not about the actual game but getting their face on tv (Schumer) and playing to soccer moms (Clinton).

 

Though the ratings system is a disaster because of parents. Stores that enforce the ratings end up giving up out of frustration because you refuse to sell GTA to a kid and 20 minutes later the parent's in there yelling at you for not selling the game to their kid and buy it for them anyway.

If someone complained to a theater owner that their kid snuck into an R rated movie and saw tits, they'd get laughed at. No one would even consider letting a lawsuit about it near a court.

 

These parent groups stomp their feet for a ratings system, and it's still the manufacturer's fault when parents ignore them.

I remember when the rating system first came about following parents bitching about Mortal Kombat. Now the same people that complained enough to bring about a ratings board for video games is ignoring the standards they petitioned to get in place. How ignorant are these fuckers? Are the video game designers meant to be doing the parents jobs now as well? I thought their job was to design entertaining games, not decide what a parent will allow their child to see or play. I mean, fuck, the game is named after the police name for stealing a car, shouldn't the fact this game is named after a crime cause a bell to ring in a parents head so they go "you know, maybe Jimmy shouldn't play a game named after crime, maybe he should play this thing with dragons and clouds and fairies instead"?

I think an underlying problem here...outside of the blatant ignorance and lack of responsibility by the parents...is that video games are still considered a sub-level of entertainment.

 

As Sek mentioned before, older parents and senators probably don't know much at all of video games, except from Pong and the Mortal Kombat controversy. Even parents around 35 years old have limited experience with video games and what experience they have is in the Atari 2600-Nintendo days, where games didn't have enough processing power to even evoke violence. And all of these people recoil because video games were "innocent" back then and feel the video game industry is meant for kids and for kids only.

 

Nevermind that the gaming industry has grown and evolved into the realm of interactive cinema. No, you see, Pac Man was simple and fun and harmless - why can't we have more games like Pac Man? People don't want to treat video games as an artform because of their steep roots in juvenile entertainment and that reluctance is what stands in the way of the rating system gaining any ground.

It's the same mindset that paints anything animated as "kid stuff". You'd be amazed (or not) at how many people let their young kids watch stuff like South Park or various anime shows because they think it's all "that bugs bunny stuff".

 

So many problems could be fixed by parents doing their goddamn jobs.

Parents... parenting? What sort of crazy hoopla is that!?!?!? Television is supposed to do the parenting these days... damn inefficient Sesame Street! They should be telling our kids that running over hookers with your car is a sometimes hobby!

 

These parents are pretty damned selfish too. And not just by complicating things in the game industry. By having more of this shit censored so parents don't have to watch over their kids as much, people who are mature enough to enjoy the censored material without being effected by it don't get to. In general, anyway... I doubt many folks are going to loose sleep over a missing sex scene in a video game.

 

They should be telling our kids that running over hookers with your car is a sometimes hobby!

 

God dammit, I just choked on my pizza roll.

 

 

They should be telling our kids that running over hookers with your car is a sometimes hobby!

 

God dammit, I just choked on my pizza roll.

You think that's bad, I spit took my beer. Over a keyboard and flatscreen monitor. My computer is gonna smell like a hobo for a month.

It's the same mindset that paints anything animated as "kid stuff". You'd be amazed (or not) at how many people let their young kids watch stuff like South Park or various anime shows because they think it's all "that bugs bunny stuff".

 

So many problems could be fixed by parents doing their goddamn jobs.

I'll second that notion...

 

When I first went to see South Park: Bigger, Longer, And Uncut, some kids (roughly 8-12 each) had bullshitted their mom into taking them and would have succeeded if management hadn't sent a representative to say that the movie, while a cartoon, was incredibly offensive and that full refunds would be given for anyone who left within the first 15 minutes.

 

 

Needless to say, the mom pulled those kids out immediately and got full refunds.

 

 

 

Also, having worked at a movie theater myself, people who bitch about kids getting into R-rated movies never had to be a ticket-taker carding people at the door.

 

The front-line of the theater, the ticket-sellers, would do their job properly and card people, but kids would always find an adult willing to buy tickets for them in order to get around it.

 

Whenever we started carding people, we'd basically get heckled and abused by anyone who thought they were being unfairly singled out and, if we did find a kid without proof of age (or proof they were underage), some random adult would vouch for them in order to get them into the movie.

 

(This was just after Columbine, so there was a lot of corporate pressure to card people going to see Matrix and other ultra-violent films.)

The game was released in October with an "M" rating. After a storm of negative publicity about the hidden scenes, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, an industry group responsible for rating games, changed the rating to "AO" for adults only.

I didn't notice this part of the article, until I saw a sign at the local Wal-Mart that read that they were accepting refunds on opened and nonopened copies of San Andreas.

 

Complete bullshit. The parents yell loud enough, for not paying attention to what their kids are playing, that the board rescinds the rating that they gave? Methinks there should be some pending litigation headed towards the ESRB from Rockstar for basically pulling the carpet out from under them and taking out a very critical distribution venue because of their own negligence.

If someone complained to a theater owner that their kid snuck into an R rated movie and saw tits, they'd get laughed at. No one would even consider letting a lawsuit about it near a court.

 

These parent groups stomp their feet for a ratings system, and it's still the manufacturer's fault when parents ignore them.

Joining this thread very late, but I just wanted to comment on this.

 

A better analogy would be a 14 year old bullshitting their mother into letting them watch Pulp Fiction in the cinema, then going onto the internet and searching for naked pictures of Uma Thurman. (I'd be intrigued how many people find this thread via google, after that last sentence.)

 

And really, I don't see why seeing a character getting a blow job is so much worse than a game in which you're rewarded for killing hundreds of people and blowing things up.

For some reason, violence and language is okay, but the moment you get sex involved it becomes a whole new beast.

 

I guess it comes from the Puritanical roots we come from, but I always found it odd that you can have an ultraviolent slasher flick where blood and limbs fly nonstop and still get an R rating, but anything more sexual than Skinamax softcore navel-humping gets an NC-17 or worse.

I'm sure it's just down to culture that I disagree with this - I'm sure it makes more sense if you're American (although I kinda hope it doesn't, it's stupid.)

 

Remember I'm from a country with the most fucked up views on nudity. The biggest selling newspaper has bare breasts on page 3 on most days, whereas until recently, it was illegal to own hardcore pronography.

 

Sex happens. I can't see how it's Rock*'s fault that someone broke the license agreement and hacked the game.

Its their fault to a degree for being lazy and not removing the code so hackers couldn't find it with a mod.

 

For politicians to dogpile on them saying this somehow negated the M rating is just stark ignorance.

Its their fault to a degree for being lazy and not removing the code so hackers couldn't find it with a mod.

 

For politicians to dogpile on them saying this somehow negated the M rating is just stark ignorance.

I wouldn't call it lazy to be honest - taking it out could possibly break code elsewhere, and if it's hidden then what harm could it do? Oh, yeah...

All I know is back when I took programming classes, it was considered bad form at least and lazy at worst to leave in excess code the finished program won't use.

 

It's what leads to bloatware, you'd be amazed at how much code in finished products does nothing but take up space.

It's what leads to bloatware, you'd be amazed at how much code in finished products does nothing but take up space.

Oh no, I'm quite used to that by now. But yeah, anyway, I agree with you. Something like this probably never would've happened back in the days when storage space for games on catridges were drastically limited compared to CDs and DVDs. The better technology gets, the more carelessly it's used.

It's what leads to bloatware, you'd be amazed at how much code in finished products does nothing but take up space.

Oh no, I'm quite used to that by now. But yeah, anyway, I agree with you. Something like this probably never would've happened back in the days when storage space for games on catridges were drastically limited compared to CDs and DVDs. The better technology gets, the more carelessly it's used.

Pretty much...

 

There wasn't "free" room around for console games until the PSX, at which time people started filling up the CDs with Full Motion Video just because they could.

 

 

As for computer games, the amount of garbage code floating around in the games has probably decreased slightly over the past few years, as most current games seem to have gone to 3D rendering instead of Full Motion Video, which takes up less space from what I can tell. That means no more CD cases full of 6 discs like when Sierra put out Phantasmagoria 1 and 2 as well as Gabriel Knight 2.

 

 

Granted, though, my perspective may be a bit warped on the PC side because I'm not trying to play Half-Life 2 or Star Wars Galaxies on my machine but, instead, puzzle games and warfare/strategy games like Axis And Allies or Age Of Empires 2.