GTA Slapped with Adults Only Rating

Pay attention now: Swearing and killing innocents = good. Boobies = bad. Chalk one up for the power of disgruntled parents and politicians.

The fracas begun by the release of a mod that opened up unplayable sexual content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has come to a head. After a fortnight of intense attention from Rockstar, the US ratings board, parent groups and several politicians, the game has had its Mature rating revoked and will likely be pulled from shelves across the country.

The Electronic Software Ratings Board announced on Wednesday that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas's M-rating (similar to the European 18 rating) has been pulled. The existing version of the game will now have to carry an Adults Only (AO) rating while a cut-down version, stripped of the salacious content, will have its M-rating reinstated.

Hal Halpin, president of the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association, said its members will probably stop selling the game immediately:

"Though not a policy, IEMA members generally do not carry AO-rated games any differently than we do not carry X-rated videos or DVDs, thus it is likely that our members will be removing all copies of the current version and re-stocking with the updated version."

Rockstar said on Wednesday that this updated version of the game would be ready by this autumn.

Despite weathering sensationalised storms in the past, mostly through the Grand Theft Auto series' supposed association with violence and murder, Rockstar has admitted that this latest bad publicity will affect sales of the game.

The ESRB's decision to re-rate Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas raises important questions.

The so-called Hot Coffee mod is a third party piece of software that people have to actively seek out and download to get at the sexually explicit material. These scenes are not normally playable in any version of the game, despite being present in the game code.

Paul Eibeler, president and CEO of Rockstar's parent company, Take Two, said that he feared Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was being "misrepresented" and singled out because of negative political attention the game has received since the Hot Coffee mod was released.

Rockstar will release a patch to stop the Hot Coffee modification from working with the PC version of the game. A statement from the company said that they hoped the parents and politicians who brought this problem to such widespread attention would be just as vocal about spreading Rockstar's solution.

The people behind the mod could find themselves in trouble too. Rockstar is currently considering its options to go after those responsible for the illegal modification of its game.

There's no word on how this latest move will affect the available of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas outside of the US.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games