GTA Sex Prompts Ratings Mudslinging

Politician says Rockstar should be held responsible for modders hacking their way into the game to uncover forgotten smut.

Age ratings are in the news again as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the US game ratings agency, has come under fire from a California assemblyman who is taking the ESRB to task for, according to him, not properly rating the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

At issue is a recent mod named Hot Coffee that allows players to take part in graphic sex acts, which would have resulted in an Adults Only rating for the game. Rockstar has denied wrongdoing, saying that it can't be faulted for the actions of people who buy and modify its games.

Rockstar also told GameSpot that the Hot Coffee code was not included in the game itself, but according to Patrick Wildenborg, the man responsible for the Hot Coffee mod, all the content unlocked by his hack was already on the retails discs.

Because the sexually explicit content can't be accessed with a store-bought copy of the game, Wildenborg surmised that the extra content is, "most probably just leftover material from a gameplay idea that didn't make the final release."

But the politician at the heart of the fracas, Democratic assemblyman Leland Yee, says the ESRB, which is part of the US games industry's self-policing effort, has a conflict of interest, because an Adults Only-rated Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would not have received as welcoming a response from US retailers as the Mature-rated version currently on shelves.

The usefulness of game ratings has been called into question in the UK too. A recent small-scale study, funded by UK-based games companies, found that the ratings system currently in place has little influence on people's buying decisions.

In fact, and worryingly for industry watchers, the study found that games that received an 18 rating were gifted an edge of cool, making them more desirable to those under 18.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games