Manhunt violence reinstated

By GamesIndustry International Published 1 November, 2007

Hot Coffee all over again?

Hackers have already tampered with the code of Rockstar's Manhunt 2 to reinstate the violent scenes and images thought to have been removed from the game, GamesIndustry.biz.

The PSP version of the controversial title has been exploited less than 24 hours since the game was officially released in North America.

The PlayStation 2 version of the game had already been distributed across the internet via torrent sites, a move that Rockstar has blamed on Sony Computer Entertainment.

The game has been censored in the US in order for it to receive an M rating - and therefore a release - rather than the original AO rating it was given by the ESRB.

The illegal exploit of the original PSP code indicates that the scenes that were cut in order to secure an M rating were not removed from the full game, rather disabled, much like the Hot Coffee mini-games in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Tamper with some more fact over at GamesIndustry.biz.

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Comments (64) Latest comment 5 years ago

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  • kincaide #1 5 years ago

    When's the Wii version out?

  • Clive_Dunn #2 5 years ago

    FFS, the Daily Mail will have a field day again.

  • Monkey_Puncher #3 5 years ago

    Oh Rockstar, it's like you enjoy all this bad publicity and negative press...

  • ElasticTangent #4 5 years ago

    If I was Rockstar I'd have left the code in and then, secretly, dropped the info on how to re-enable it on the net just to get on the censors tits.

  • Kazzahdrane #5 5 years ago

    Rockstar, imo, can do whatever the hell they want. If they want to get everyone up in a tizzy about violence in their games then that's their fight.

    However, they must surely realise that they are ambassadors of the industry to the "outside world", and that when they do something childish like this to show how they don't want to play along by everyone else's rules it makes the entire industry looks immature and, dare I say, bloodthirsty.

    The ESRB should penalise them in some way to show they don't condone this sort of activity, like say they won't give GTAIV a rating for another 12 months. That would teach them not to bait Jack Thompson and the tabloids.

  • AZA #6 5 years ago

    Who cares, its not like Manhunt was any good

  • Wayne #7 5 years ago

    Excellent. I like it. It's like Rockstar are to the games industry, what the Sex Pistols were to the music industry in their day. Two big fingers straight up at the ESRB!

  • chrisjm #8 5 years ago

    this is tagged as PS3 in the RSS feed ;)

    Oh and 2 sugars, thanks.

  • Arcadiian #9 5 years ago

    @Kazzahdrane.

    The game, if played as you're supposed to, doesn't allow the added violence. People have hacked into the game to find the disabled content. This isn't Rockstar's fault, at all.

  • Lacero #10 5 years ago

    Arcadiian: I agree, and maybe everyone here agrees, but Hot Coffee was taken very seriously by a lot of people :(

  • seregrail7 #11 5 years ago

    What Rockstar done was put a filter over the scenes, to obscure them. Other than that they were the same, just harder to see. Hackers have removed the filter, not Rockstar's fault really, there's not much you can do about people being able to hack out a filter.

  • Eighthours #12 5 years ago

    The Jack Thompson baiting continues!

  • seregrail7 #13 5 years ago

    What Rockstar done was put a filter over the scenes, to obscure them. Other than that they were the same, just harder to see. Hackers have removed the filter, not Rockstar's fault really, there's not much you can do about people being able to hack out a filter.

  • zuljin #14 5 years ago

    @Arcadiian
    "The game, if played as you're supposed to, doesn't allow the added violence. People have hacked into the game to find the disabled content. This isn't Rockstar's fault, at all."

    This is Rockstars fault. They were told not to supply that content and they did. The fact that someone had to hack it to see it means that they too were at fault. But those anims /textures etc should never have seen the light of day onto that disc.

  • FairgroundTown #15 5 years ago

    Rockstar = The Sex Pistols

    Yer - childish, shock tactics designed by marketing men to make money out of kids who think they are being rebellious.

  • Moz #16 5 years ago

    "This is Rockstars fault. They were told not to supply that content and they did. The fact that someone had to hack it to see it means that they too were at fault. But those anims /textures etc should never have seen the light of day onto that disc."

    But surely the textures and models are the same as the ones in the rest of the game. Using a filter to mask the violence is the only way to sensor the scenes without taking months re-doing parts of the game.

    I'm sure if people wanted they could hack Bioshock to remove the green overlay when you rip the symbiotes out of the little sisters just nobodies felt the need to.

  • reality_cheque #17 5 years ago

    Is anyone REALLY surprised?

    Rockstar are more like the chav kids that want to get ASBOed as it's cool than the Sex Pistols.

  • haowan #18 5 years ago

    They're not at all.

  • zuljin #19 5 years ago

    @Moz
    "But surely the textures and models are the same as the ones in the rest of the game. Using a filter to mask the violence is the only way to sensor the scenes without taking months re-doing parts of the game."

    If a txture or model is offensive, it would have to be removed throughout. If it is only offensive in certain context, ie when a model is performing an animation, then the anim needs to be changed.

    It is not the only way to censor scenes, it is the easy way. Anyway - you cannot turn round and say "but this will take months to redo". They made a game and got an AO rating, and for an M rating they had to remove content. They didn't. Simple as.

  • Triggerhappytel #20 5 years ago

    Did they not learn to actually remove the code rather than hide it after the Hot Coffee fiasco?!

  • BillyBrush #21 5 years ago

    Not liking a game is not a good reason to be happy it's banned

    99.9% of 18 rated games are rated such because of very sterile reasons, such as squib effects and bodies blowing into chunks, very dull stuff tbh

    Only one has actually been really grisly, nasty, and made people feel uncomfortable

    Cinema reached that place decades ago with the texas chainsaw massacre, gaming still cannot stomach it, which is a shame, this industry really is not that creative, Manhunt oddly was one of few games to feature good acting, with Brian Cox doing an excellent job as Starkweather...Killer7 being one of the only other titles of late to even get into the realms of a schitzophrenic/psycopathic attitude

    Myself, i don't want the utter amateur dramatics of 10 everywhere Bioshock, the plot was nicked off Oldboy, and the voice performances, especially oirish becoming new yoik were performed by voice actors sans talent with a shit, unorigional script ....Manhunt had things some games don't (not simply gore), it's fine to call it a pile of shit if you didn't like it, but some people do, and it's the crappest argument ever to be happy that something is banned...my view on Bioshock isn't glowing, but i wouldn't be clapping if they banned the thing

    - the great lauded game of the year, and it takes it's storyline from park chan wook, one of cinema's most violent movie makers, give a little Sympathy for lady rockstar i say

    hopefully about 1/2 of that makes sense, which would be good going fo me


  • Rirekon #22 5 years ago

    Remember folks; Publicity = Sales

  • BillyBrush #23 5 years ago

    FairgroundTown
    01-Nov-07 14:42:42 Rockstar = The Sex Pistols
    Yer - childish, shock tactics designed by marketing men to make money out of kids who think they are being rebellious.


    BBFC 18 ratings are supposed to be enforcable by law (at retail), so the view they design them for kids is a little shortsighted, however that's certainly what the media and their detractors can say. But you can use lazy classification on any media, i can do it on your favourite band and movie if you'd like, it's a peice of piss

  • seregrail7 #24 5 years ago

    I was reading about how to do this, you have to rip an ISO of the game, download a program to extract the ISO, edit a file for every level of the game to tell it not to display the overlay, then rebuild the ISO, get software to run it on your PSP, and have a memory stick large enough to run the game.

    There's really nothing Rockstar can do to stop people picking apart the game and removing parts of it.

  • Moz #25 5 years ago

    "BBFC 18 ratings are supposed to be enforcable by law (at retail), so the view they design them for kids is a little shortsighted, however that's certainly what the media and their detractors can say. But you can use lazy classification on any media, i can do it on your favourite band and movie if you'd like, it's a peice of piss "

    The ratings work to a point but sometime the BBFC rightly or wrongly deem something to be so bad that the risk of under 18's seeing it is too high.

    There are plenty of cases in the film industry of DVD versions being cut down from what was shown in the cinema or being refused a DVD release altogether

  • BillyBrush #26 5 years ago

    there are indeed...and i can see why they'd think that esp with a Wii version

    but that basically condemns BBFC ratings as being useless and unenforcable, in which case why should the same kids be playing stranglehold/the darkness? - because they would not be as damaging/worrying. It's a fine argument but points to issues with their validity in terms of the laws, and rockstar are perhaps the unfortunate casualites of a poorly enforced ratings system, rather than making content which is that abhorrent

    film has got away with a fair bit in the Saw/Hostel era of late, with uncut dvd's ~(hostel2) featuring insane amounts of unsavoury stuff...all a bit harsh on Rockstar imo as they are hamstrung by the medium they work in, rather than the visual content they produce
    Edited by BillyBrush at 01/11/07 @ 15:55

  • Freek #27 5 years ago

    The content diden't need to be removed for the game to get an M rating.
    It only needed to be blurred a bitt and have some added sound effects. So that the violence is still there, but it's less explicit and more implied.
    You can hack around that but that isn't Rockstars fault.
    They were required to add blurr to pass the rating, not make the game hack proof or remove the content entirely.

    It's in the nature of interactive content that's generated in real time: you can change it.
    Edited by Freek at 01/11/07 @ 16:02

  • zuljin #28 5 years ago

    @seregrail7
    "There's really nothing Rockstar can do to stop people picking apart the game and removing parts of it."

    No you're right. People will pick at it. But they should have removed the content that was offensive in the first place.

    @Freek
    "The content diden't need to be removed for the game to get an M rating."

    /Stops reading...
    Yes it did. Because otherwise, guess what? People hack the game, and get to see it!

    Put it this way people, say Rockstar included some copyrighted material in a texture that is used nowhere in the game. But it is supplied on the disc. Whether its hardcoded, or encrypted, or just a plain file, it simply has no place on the disc.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #29 5 years ago

    There's really nothing Rockstar can do to stop people picking apart the game and removing parts of it.

    Shite.

    They could have, and should have, attempted to make it more difficult to hack. From the sound of things, you just toggle some text in an .ini file. On the last console game I worked, the publisher forced us to make sure that nothing was easily available to hackers who could manipulate a ISO, that would allow them to break or unbalance the game. They had technical test people check to make sure, and flagged up anything that looke dlike a security risk.

    Rockstar (the publisher part) obviously through such things were beneath them, which was REALLY FUCKING STUPID on their part, after they'd been stung worse than anyone else in the industry by exactly this sort of thing.

    Edit: Upon checking the website with the instructions, it actually is a human-readable text file on the disk. That's just unspeakably sloppy.
    Edited by MENTAL1ST at 01/11/07 @ 16:19

  • seregrail7 #30 5 years ago

    They could have, and should have, attempted to make it more difficult to hack.
    Should they? It would still end up being hacked, why waste time? It would slow thme down by what, a week?

    Yes it did. Because otherwise, guess what? People hack the game, and get to see it!
    No it didn't, it had to be toned down. If it was deemed acceptable that a filter just be applied, then what's the problem? Sure people will remove it, just like people replaced textures in Tomb Raider to make Lara naked, Joe Public probably isn't going to have the knowledge or be bothered to do so.
    Edited by seregrail7 at 01/11/07 @ 16:26

  • zuljin #31 5 years ago

    @seregrail7
    "No it didn't, it had to be toned down."

    And in toning down, less detail on the content was needed - hence should be removed. I'm sorry, but like I said, they took the easy option applying a filter. Removing content was always going to be more work, but it would cover their backs from something like this happening.

    "Should they? It would still end up being hacked, why waste time? It would slow thme down by what, a week?"

    You don't understand. Editing a simple setup file probably means there is a section in the code that says if gore disabled -> apply filter. That check should never even be there, it should apply regardless. Like Mentalist said, very sloppy.

    "just like people replaced textures in Tomb Raider to make Lara naked"
    Heh, I did that when I was 14. :) The difference is that Eidos never supplied me with nude pictures of Lara to use.
    Edited by zuljin at 01/11/07 @ 16:31

  • seregrail7 #32 5 years ago

    I think when you need extra software not endorsed by Sony or Rockstar to change a game, they are no longer responsible.

  • zuljin #33 5 years ago

    @seregrail7
    "I think when you need extra software not endorsed by Sony or Rockstar to change a game, they are no longer responsible."

    Well the Bethesda case shows you are in fact wrong.

    http://www.esrb.org/about/news/downloads...

    EDIT: Basically it would mean they decieved the ERSB and one of the two would probably end up paying for any lawsuits of when the game was sold under a different rating.
    Edited by zuljin at 01/11/07 @ 16:42

  • andromeda #34 5 years ago

    the game sucks anyway.
    lets talk about something else

  • Grogmonkey #35 5 years ago

    Please visit here: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?art... to see why what Rockstar has just done is INSANELY stupid.

    The choice bits:

    "Take-Two agreed to set up a new system designed to ensure that all game content "is considered and reviewed in preparing submissions to a rating authority" in future."

    and

    "Indeed, if Take-Two and Rockstar fail to meet their promises, they'll face fines of up to $11,000 for each time they're out of order."

    That was in relation to the Hot Coffee thing, where Rockstar left content on the disc and out of reach of the normal consumer. But that doesn't matter, because if it's on the disc, so sayeth the Federal Trade Commission, it needs to be rated. The content that's on the Manhunt 2 disc probably bumps it from an 'M' to an 'AO', which is just what happened with GTA: SA, and history tells us that that means Rockstar may have to change the rating BACK to AO for the current versions already being produced or in stores, then make ANOTHER version (rated M for reals this time) without the easily accessible content anyway.

    You'd think they would have learned by now.

  • smelly #36 5 years ago

    >who cares

    Erm, jack thompson probably will.


    >When's the Wii version out?

    Now in the US, never in the uk

  • smelly #37 5 years ago

    "This is Rockstars fault. They were told not to supply that content and they did. The fact that someone had to hack it to see it means that they too were at fault. But those anims /textures etc should never have seen the light of day onto that disc."


    Bullshit.

    The animations/gore are still there, they just obscured it. That was enough for the censors.

    Its NOT their fault if someone hacked it. And its NOT their fault if someone goes ONLINE and DOWNLOADS a patch to turn the violence back on.

    I'm sure they are MILLIONS of other things online which are FAR MORE shocking that low polygon death scenes.

  • smelly #38 5 years ago

    "EDIT: Basically it would mean they decieved the ERSB and one of the two would probably end up paying for any lawsuits of when the game was sold under a different rating."

    Except in this case, that's NOT the case. Hot coffee got them in trouble (wrongly imho) because they failed to show the scenes to the esrb.

    In this case they DID show the scenes to the esrb. There's nothing that they didnt fail to reveal to them. Hackers have just hacked out the filter. That's no more troublesome than hackers hacking out the blur filter in the sims and changing the textures to have pubes and stuff.

  • kangarootoo #39 5 years ago

    @FairgroundTown

    "Rockstar = The Sex Pistols

    Yer - childish, shock tactics designed by marketing men to make money out of kids who think they are being rebellious."

    +1

  • Pablo2k5 #40 5 years ago

    seregrail7 said... "Hackers have removed the filter, not Rockstar's fault really"

    Really? How about Rockstar just take out the violent scenes?

  • smelly #41 5 years ago

    (quad post damage! Because the more i read peoples posts the more i'm feeling like i'm surrounded by morons!)

    "It's not that I am easily put off by violence, but I loathe this whole snuff vibe. It's facktup imo."

    Banning something because you dont like it is beyond the point. I didnt like halo 3, should it be banned? Now you may say that halo 3 isnt anywhere near as violent - BUT i can pretty much gaurantee that while playing halo 3 you do more killing than manhunt, you probably have more ways of killing people than manhunt (grenade, headshot, plasma beam, machine gun, etc etc), and by means of the internet manhunt psp can be modified to make it more offensive - but so can halo 3 (by playing online against a load of american teenagers).

    So I dont like halo 3.. and after thinking about it.. i think it should be banned.. and good riddance to - as it's an average boring game (we dont want average games do we children?)


    "They made a game and got an AO rating, and for an M rating they had to remove content. They didn't. Simple as."

    Nope, the esrb were HAPPY with just a filter over the volience. They DIDNT demand it be removed (or they wouldnt have given it a M with just a filter)



    (Dunno why i'm getting so upset about this, i dont own it, and have no intention of buying it - just cant stand idiotic uninformed posts by people)

    @Moz,Arcadiian, seregrail7 & BillyBrush = Tar for being the few people to make sense around here!

  • kangarootoo #42 5 years ago

    "Edit: Upon checking the website with the instructions, it actually is a human-readable text file on the disk. That's just unspeakably sloppy."

    That alone suggests to me that R*'s only concern was passing the certification process. They should have also been concerned with the detail and point of the initial reason for refusal.

  • smelly #43 5 years ago

    "Really? How about Rockstar just take out the violent scenes?"

    If you knew ANYTHING about game development.. sigh.. actually why am i bothering? Some of you guys read too much daily mail.

  • zuljin #44 5 years ago

    @smelly
    "Its NOT their fault if someone hacked it. And its NOT their fault if someone goes ONLINE and DOWNLOADS a patch to turn the violence back on."

    I never said it was. But it is their fault that content was on a disc that should not have been.

    "In this case they DID show the scenes to the esrb. There's nothing that they didnt fail to reveal to them. Hackers have just hacked out the filter. That's no more troublesome than hackers hacking out the blur filter in the sims and changing the textures to have pubes and stuff."

    No they didn't. Ratings boards are not games programmers - or have any technical inclination for that matter, nor should they. For all they knew the new stylised cut scenes were video files - and as long as that is all people got to see that would have been fine.

    And again - re the sims - AFAIK, EA did not supply the Sims with nude textures. There is a huge difference between modifying a game with your own content, and unlocking something.

    "I'm sure they are MILLIONS of other things online which are FAR MORE shocking that low polygon death scenes."

    Really neither here nor there.

  • Lacero #45 5 years ago

    In this case, as you need to get the files off the iso as plaintext, could you claim ripping the iso is a violation of the DMCA (in america) and so actually viewing it is illegal anyway?

  • smelly #46 5 years ago

    "And again - re the sims - AFAIK, EA did not supply the Sims with nude textures. There is a huge difference between modifying a game with your own content, and unlocking something. "


    REALLY? Well the main reason Rockstar got in trouble with "hot coffee" was due to the nude patch. If it was fully clothed sex they wouldnt have bothered.

  • smelly #47 5 years ago

    @irnchriz: +10


    (apart from the last paragraph which has some holes in it.. so +.05 to that)

  • zuljin #48 5 years ago

    @smelly
    "REALLY? Well the main reason Rockstar got in trouble with "hot coffee" was due to the nude patch. If it was fully clothed sex they wouldnt have bothered."

    Except that you really don't know (either of us for that matter). It was only rerated in America, a country notorious for flying of the handle with any sexual content in media - let alone sexual content for a 17 game.

  • smelly #49 5 years ago

    >Except that you really don't know (either of us for that matter).


    Yes i do. Because the same fully clothed sex scene used in hot coffee is actually running in the background of one of the earlier cutscenes in the game. Couldnt tell you the name of the mission, as it was a long time ago i played it - it was fairly early on in the game though. And the ratings board had no problems with it at all.

    The problem came about due to the nudity and sex, not just the fully clothed simulated sex.

    Or MAYBE i guess down to the fact it was "interactive"
    Edited by smelly at 01/11/07 @ 18:17

  • zuljin #50 5 years ago

    @smelly
    "Or MAYBE i guess down to the fact it was "interactive""

    So, I'm right in that we don't really know which one the ESRB kicked off over? I reckon ultimately, the fact you currently need to do this via pc is what may get them off the hook. Ultimately though I have no clue because I'm not a judge or jury.

    Still, with current precedents I think it was very silly to even risk something like this in the first place.

  • Nithron #51 5 years ago

    I think this is all just another issue of annoying petty-minded people complaining about something totally unimportant because their lives are devoid of any real problems.

    If Rockstar evaporated tomorrow, it'd be phallic imagery in disney movies, or some equally rubbish conspiracy theory.


    Oh wait, we're all in an internet forum complaining about censorship of a probably less-than-stellar videogame, aren't we?
    Oh crumbs.
    Edited by Nithron at 01/11/07 @ 19:59

  • smelly #52 5 years ago

    @kelly's_h: Wasnt really just replying to you.. but to everyone who said "i'm glad it's banend - i didnt like the first one"

  • dadrester #53 5 years ago

    smelly said: ...stuff...

    +1

    first of all the process of 'unlocking' the scenes is completely and utterly illegal. it involves reverse engineering rockstar's game, a strict violation of the end user agreement, using applications that are illegal (since they use leaked parts of sony's SDK) and so in theory R* and sony could bring charges against anyone doing it.

    secondly the ESRB passed the resubmitted version with an M rating. nothing was hidden from them and they felt the fancy visual effects were enough for the new rating to be awarded. whoever it was that inferred the ratings board don't have a clue what they are being shown needs to tighten a few loose screws. unlike the bbfc they have nothing to do with film or music, and they are pretty much made up of games industry veterans.

    removing the content entirely would fundamentally break the game, since the ultraviolence is it's main USP and since the ESRB were happy with the changes there was no point in doing so. there would be an issue if rockstar had put in some button combo or hidden option that allows players to see the game without the filters, but they didn't. and saying "but the content is there" is a pointless argument. a good artist or clever hacker could re-texture lara with naked skin and pubes using other textures from the game, for example, or edit a script so that it appeared she was being raped by the t-rex (though you'd have to be a very bored individual to try to reverse engineer animation data).

    [edit] oh and editing a text file with new content (whether it's adding stuff or deleting stuff) is just the same as nudifying DOAX volleyball by adding in your own content (in the form of script changes and new textures).
    Edited by dadrester at 02/11/07 @ 01:28

  • dadrester #54 5 years ago

    just a little final note... if a hacker rips the UMD, decompiles the code and hacks out the whole kill scenes (which would be theoretically possible and not so different to what's actually happened) then recompiles the code and releases it as a bit torrent, does this mean the game should be reclassified with a T for teen rating?!

  • Pulsar_t #55 5 years ago

    I don't believe the responses this game has been getting, especially considering it's a bit pants. I hate Rockstar and their attitude, and I would have supported JT had he not been an arsehole himself.

    Why don't you focus on GTA IV instead you farking bastards?

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #56 5 years ago

    Why should Rockstar need to protect the content, if anyone is to blame its the console manufacturers by having shit security enabling hackers to pirate the games in the first place and giving them the ability to edit game files.

    Because it is Rockstar who have the responsibility to the ratings board. If limited inbuilt security is part of the specification of a device, they have to develop with that in mind. Even Xbox 360, the most secure of all the consoles, is not protected against modifying data files on disk - especially if they're just plain text.

    If some equivalent to this very very simple hack can be done with an Action Replay or some such device on an unmodified console (perhaps more likely on the PS2 version), then they're back in the Hot Coffee situation - precisely because those filters are all that stands between the game being rated as M and AO. Rockstar / Take 2 have been stung twice by this before, as zuljin posted, they had promised the ESRB that they would make concerted efforts to protect against this sort of thing, and yet they just haven't.

    Whether you personally agree or disagree, precedent dictates that post-release actions of hackers can affect the ratings of a game. Rockstar should be paranoid about this, but they have just been lazy instead. Really, all it needed was one exec to say "If we're obscuring the action with filters, how can we prevent hackers removing the filters?"
    Edited by MENTAL1ST at 02/11/07 @ 08:54

  • Avenger1324 #57 5 years ago

    AFAIK you only have to get the game rated. That means you can patch a game to add or remove material without having to re-rate it. Carmaggedon did this with the red blood patch.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #58 5 years ago

    Unfortunately for Rockstar/Take2 the GTA:SA and Oblivion re-rating rulings mean that is no longer the case.

  • zuljin #59 5 years ago

    @dadrester
    "first of all the process of 'unlocking' the scenes is completely and utterly illegal."

    Noone said it wasn't. Two wrongs don't make a right.

    "secondly the ESRB passed the resubmitted version with an M rating. nothing was hidden from them..."

    Again, it was. The submission showed content with a filter. This is gameplay without a filter, which should not be accessible.

    "whoever it was that inferred the ratings board don't have a clue what they are being shown needs to tighten a few loose screws."

    I suggest you read this:
    [link url=http://www.esrb.org/ratings/faq.jsp#14
    ]http://www.esrb.org/ratings/faq.jsp#14
    [/link]

    "While they are not required to have advanced skills as computer and video game players (since their job is to review content and determine its age-appropriateness, not to assess how challenging or entertaining a particular game is to play), they do gain or further develop these abilities since they are also required, time-permitting, to play the final version of games (after their release) when they are not busy assigning ratings."

    They are NOT "games industry veterans".

    "removing the content entirely would fundamentally break the game..."

    Sorry, not the ratings boards problem, Rockstars problem.

    "oh and editing a text file with new content (whether it's adding stuff or deleting stuff) is just the same as nudifying DOAX volleyball by adding in your own content."

    No it isn't. The reratings occur because material was included on discs which shouldn't have been there. If I add content to a game, the developer has not supplied possibly offensive content to thousands of people!

  • Grogmonkey #60 5 years ago

    GamePolitics.com has a story on this, and an announcement from What'shissocks from Take Two or Rockstar or wherever basically saying 'We told the ESRB everything'. In which case, they should be in the clear, because that 'everything' would include the content that was hidden, but not actually removed.

    So they could be okay with this one, so long as the ESRB don't dispute that claim.

    They seem pretty confident, though. So I'm guessing 'storm in a teacup', 'mountain out of a molehill' type deal.

    (Apologies for the vague details, but I can't get to GamePolitics to get direct quotes at the moment)

  • dadrester #61 5 years ago

    "first of all the process of 'unlocking' the scenes is completely and utterly illegal."

    Noone said it wasn't. Two wrongs don't make a right.

    "secondly the ESRB passed the resubmitted version with an M rating. nothing was hidden from them..."

    Again, it was. The submission showed content with a filter. This is gameplay without a filter, which should not be accessible.

    thus without hacking the game illegally, the content is not accessible and therefore your argument is null and void, unless of course... you are an ESRB employee?!

  • kangarootoo #62 5 years ago

    @smelly

    "Couldnt tell you the name of the mission, as it was a long time ago i played it - it was fairly early on in the game though. And the ratings board had no problems with it at all. "

    Not true. They may have let it pass running in the background, but that is not the same as saying that had no issue with it in any context. The sequence was removed on the request of the ratings board, and the sequence at that time had fully clothed characters in it. The addition of a nudity patch further down the road was not what the whole hot coffee furore was about, and certainly not comething the ratings board gave two hoots about.

  • kangarootoo #63 5 years ago

    @dadrester

    "the content is not accessible and therefore your argument is null and void, unless of course... you are an ESRB employee?!"

    Oh come on, like anyone writing on here has any real bloody idea of what constitutes a breach and what doesn't.

    If the ESRB say it was a breach, then it was breach. If they don't, then it wasn't. End of story

  • Ryze #64 5 years ago

    Heh!