I read an article today from The Register entitled GTA maker coughs up $20m for ‘hot coffee’ sex.

Now if anyone doesn’t know the background to this story, here it is.  When Take2 released the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas there was a hidden mini game in it that involved the character having sex with his girlfriend.

Now this scene, whilst included in the code, was NOT accessible through the gameplay unless you applied a hack to the game itself.

In the US, typically, ‘everyone went mad’ slapping an Adults only rating on the game instead of a Mature rating, a game I’ll note that had already been given an 18 rating by the BBFC here in the UK.

Take2 also spent 10′s of millions pulling all copies off the shelves and then releasing a patched version… only for class-action lawsuits to come rolling in.

Let’s put this in perspective shall we? A checklist of what’s in GTA games

• Guns – OK
• Stealing cars – OK
• Murder – OK
• Police killing – OK
• Organised crime – OK
• Blowing things up – OK
• Prostitutes – OK
• Mini-game for having sex with your girlfriend (whilst both characters were FULLY CLOTHED) – OMG we must pull the game off the shelves and everyone sues us!

Here is my take (and also one I read in the comments of the original article) on the situation.

A child keeps pestering their parent to buy them GTA, so they go and buy it regardless of the rating because ‘it’s a computer game’ and ‘all computer games are for kids’ aren’t they?

News of this game hack hits the news which now brings to their parent’s attention that this game is full of sex and violence.

This embarrasses the parent that their bad parenting skills have meant that their little angel is playing a game full of content not designed for them… hence the entire purpose of the RATING SYSTEM!  Obviously the parent can’t be to blame, it must be the fault of the developers, so let’s sue them!