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[Tellaerin]

It's a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fine for not disclosing everything when you send in your tape/forms to the ESRB.

Yes, but AFAIR, this only applies to content that's accessible to the player as part of the game experience, which this was not. You can't normally get at that content by playing, regardless of what you do in the game. It's only accessible via an unauthorized modification of the game itself, one which Rockstar neither encouraged nor condoned. It took a hacker on a fishing expedition to find and enable the sequence in question.

Other people here have already mentioned that disabling particular chunks of code rather than yanking them out wholesale is hardly unheard of, particularly late in development, and that this occurs for good reason. Giving Rockstar more than a slap on the wrist for shipping SA with what was intended to be a deleted minigame because they didn't delete it well enough would hardly be just, IMO.

 

[DDayton]

Again, can the ESRB really do anything? They are a voluntary ratings systems -- do they have the legal authority to do anything? Rockstar needs to appease them to get future titles rated, but the ESRB can't force them to do anything otherwise, right?

 

[DopeyFish]

The DOA nude hack isn't a fair analogy. The DOA nude hack is kids making nude texture packs with a modded Xbox and applying their custom textures to the game. The GTA:SA thing was something put in there by the devs but locked away. Team Ninja didn't make the nude textures in the game, the users did.

Incorrect.

AFAIK in DOA Volleyball, some of the chicks were fully textured when nude. Some of them weren't.

As I said before... ESRB is in super shady territory. Regardless if someone took hacking programs to it, and modified it. The content itself as a retail package without any modification whatsoever is rated M material and nothing more.

If someone entered a passcode or pressed a combination of keys to make it work then ESRB would have a case. But when someone has to alter something to make it work, it basically invalidates any case the ESRB had to begin with as Rockstar/Take2 have violated nothing.

 

[Amused_To_Death]

It's a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge fine for not disclosing everything when you send in your tape/forms to the ESRB.

Huge fine??? ESRB doesn't have the authority to levy fines...show me a single precedent where ESRB fined a developer or a publisher for objectionble material? The ESRB is set up by the game publishers themselves.

 

[human5892]

If companies try to skirt around the ESRB, then the ESRB becomes useless and the government will step in. Rockstar is supposed to ensure that all questionable content in their game is fully disclosed so that it can be appropriately labeled. Any attempt by them to undermine the ESRB hurts the entire game industry as a whole. If Rockstar knew this minigame existed, and if they failed to take the necessary precautions to remove/disable it, then they are responsible for it being there. Was it intentionally left available? Probably not -- but that doesn't excuse them from its presence.

Yeah, but I think the point some people are trying to make (that I would wholeheartedly agree with) is that the whole idea that submitting a tape of an unplayable (without a hack) sexual portion of a game that also contains the ability to murder innocent people would make a difference in the ESRB's reaction and the game's rating is ridiculous.

Of course, that's not the ESRB's fault, but the fault of the American society that rates a simple sex act as far more offensive than wanton violence.

 

[AtomicShroom]

I'll never understand why sex, the very reason of each and everyone's existence, the purest expression of love, something that is the very opposite of war and hate, be so taboo in the States. It just doesn't make any logical sense.

 

[Deg]

This is just stupid and a waste of time.

 

[Hero]

I think it's silly too, but realistically, R* shouldn't have tried to hide it, because now it just makes them look that much more guilty.

Also, if R* decides not to forward their games to ESRB anymore, then a lot of retailers (read: most of them) will probably not order the next game. Retailers don't want to get shit from parents that are upset about kids coming back with mature games. In the end, the only people that are going to be hurt are gamers.

 

[Amused_To_Death]

I think it's silly too, but realistically, R* shouldn't have tried to hide it, because now it just makes them look that much more guilty.

Also, if R* decides not to forward their games to ESRB anymore, then a lot of retailers (read: most of them) will probably not order the next game. Retailers don't want to get shit from parents that are upset about kids coming back with mature games. In the end, the only people that are going to be hurt are gamers.

Retailers don't give a shit about what parents say as long as they can sell games. Rockstar games sell in the millions. It won't work, look what happened when Wal Mart tried to stop selling VC then when it found out it's losing sales to the other retailers, they ate crow and put it back on the shelf. Rockstar has everyone by the balls and that won't change until their games stop selling...