I was really sitting indulging on all the GTA IV information I can gather. Multi-player
information, Storyline, graphic engine updates, Screen shots, even that supposed GTA intro
I have downloading as I write this. That was until someone brought something to my
attention that made me feel very ashamed. Now to avoid confusion and potential flame
posts, comments, etc I have to add the following:
[i]This is a personal stance and my goal with is to share why I came to this decision. This is
NOT a fucking movement.[/i]
Hot Coffee....
Remember that shit!? Rockstar got caught with it's proverbial pants down for a mini-
game in GTA: San Andreas, they had INTENTIONALLY left in, inaccessible but in the game
all the same. Now the problem isn't so much that I don't want to have porn on, in and/or
with my video games but rather the spineless backpedaling that Rockstar was doing at that
time.
Initially it seemed like a reasonable misunderstanding based on old fogies who just don't
get the power of the interweb. You know, the one made of a series of tubes? Why wouldn't
it be misunderstood by politicians who are usually out of touch with "kids these days" (I'm
32 T.T). Even the statement Rockstar released seemed reasonable. They were releasing a
new GTA, a lightening rod for the "video games are destroying America" sect. Also being a
PC gamer primarily, I know what the "Mod Community" can & have done to add to a game
as well to an entire industry. (IE: Counter-Strike) So why wouldn't this be a factual
statement. Now keep in mind that Hot Coffee was originally found on the PC version of
GTA:SA
Hacker(s) did it statement:
[i]"So far we have learned that the "hot coffee" modification is the work of a determined
group of hackers who have gone to significant trouble to alter scenes in the official version
of the game," reads the statement. "In violation of the software user agreement, hackers
created the 'hot coffee' modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and
altering the game's source code. Since the 'hot coffee' scenes cannot be created without
intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse engineering of the game's
source code, we are currently investigating ways that we can increase the security
protection of the source code and prevent the game from being altered by the 'hot coffee'
modification."[/i] ([url=http://www.gamersgame.com/cgi-bin/ggblog.pl?
ggblog=714051]Source[/url])
The statement kinda irked me because the term "hacker" is used so interchangeably that
it became really funny to me. It was an unfair blanket of blame to a very important sector
of the computer community that is NEEDED, like the bacteria on our skin to protect us from
infections but I digress. Statement suited to put blame outside of their own. And it was
reasonable, why take blame for a MOD that was created and applied to their game.
Completely justifiable defense, modders added to the game, damn you guys.. It's bad
enough video games have a bad rap why would modders do something so insanely trivial,
it adds no real depth to the game, etc.
Then I saw this:
[i]"All the contents of this mod was already available on the original disks. Therefor the
scriptcode, the models, the animations and the dialogs by the original voice-actors were all
created by RockStar. The only thing I had to do to enable the mini-games was toggling a
single bit in the main.scm file. (Of course it was not easy to find the correct bit). The Nude
models that are used as a bonus in the Quick action version of the mod, were also already
present on the original disk.
But all this material is completely inaccessible in an unmodded version of the game. It can
therefor not be considered a cheat, easter-egg or hidden feature. But is most probably just
leftover material from a gameplay idea that didn't make the final release. I would really
like to stress that this material is only accessible after willfully applying the hot coffee mod
(or something similar) to the game."[/i] (
Source)
WHAAAAAAAAAA!? Ok, here we go with the he said she said bullshit right? Well not really
because someone published the Pro-action Replay code for the PS2 that unlocked that.
Which confirms the above statement. Now this isn't the 1st time I've ever seen this kind of
content blocking done, it's usually done for easter eggs, tricks, cheats, etc.. "up up down
down" being the most famous of them all. Also peripherals like Gameshark and Pro-action
replay have long uncovered secrets left within games, even ones never meant to be seen
due to unspecified reasons. For example, the Lamborghini Diablo was removed from the US
version GT:A-spec due to licensing issues but not really. It was still in the game but it was
made inaccessible unless you put a proaction replay code and even then I believe they
made it uncontrollable in a way; it had 15,000 HP O.o.
When I read that this and remembered back to GT: A-spec I realized that Rockstar's
intention was never to really explain away the situation based on innocent boys playing in
the yard but rather setting the house on fire and then handing the matches to kids to let
them take the blame. Fuck that! You mean I go out, buy your game (that is fucking great
by the way) and somehow I'm at fault for something they did!? Not to mention the
unneeded negative attention it gave the industry, the ammunition it gave to douches like
Thompson and setting the way for the continue misinformation of sex in games that
followed, such as "Mass Effect". How a company can still be around after all that is fucking
amazing. How anyone else is actively going out and purchasing GTAIV after being fucking
blamed for their fuck up akin to Stockholm's syndrome. All this came back to me when my
friend mentioned to me "I thought you were the one who said 'fuck Rockstar for blaming
me for their fuck up'' and he was right.
I had forgotten about all this shit and now that I trolled the Internet for all this information
above it got me even more angry. Not just @ them but myself for allowing me to forget
how Rockstar tried to save it's own ass by blaming the gamers that had gone out and
purchased their game. I was part of that problem that allowed Rockstar to continue doing
business. I don't expect anyone to follow suit but I see video games as an art form. An
expression of art that allows us to be interactive and be told a story in a manner that was
never possible. Anyone who isn't bold enough to stand behind their art is just like someone
lying to me about who they are. This isn't about money because I know companies need to
make money for me to continue to be entertained but I have seen MANY video game
companies continue to do things THEIR way and not cave in due money. Fuck you Rockstar,
you won't be getting my $59.99 + Tax. Ooh... Now I can finally get Thrillville: Off the Rails,
3 times!
PS Destructoid, your BBCode is broke yo!
Bans's blog
follow this blog
subscribe via RSS
send message
invite to meetup+play
No, the BBCode isn't broke. You are.
Also, that's a fucking lame reason for boycotting a purchase of what will most likely be a win game.
I was hoping to see some sort of critique on game design, not this nonsensical shit.
Also, welcome. Never seen you before, so welcome, if you're new. Please don't fail again.
...eh.
God, I'd hate to see how angry you get over something worth getting angry about...
This does not affect me as I will not be buying GTA4. I will instead be buying Saints Row 2. becuase quite frankly, SR2 looks like it has a lot more options and a lot more going for it then GTA4, which to me, from everything I have read and heard, looks to be pretty much a next gen GTA4.
Plus haveing a set protaganist for a GTA4, I feel, was a mistake.
Okay and if that's you're reason for saying fuck GTA IV, that's pretty ridiculous. Oh yeah and the BBCode is not broken, considering there are a great number of people that have no problem with it.
But you should really save your emotion for stuff that's actually worth getting worked up about.
im not buying it just because i could never get into those damn GTA or any other sandbox whatever you call em games.
(okay, i did like Shenmue)
carry on with the hating
This wouldn't be the first time game data was left on the disk, but inaccessible. Ever check ROM hacking websites? You'd be surprised the kind of sprites and animations that could have been in, say, Sonic 2, but didn't make the final cut. My guess is they were joking around and making a sex minigame in their down time and just left it on the disc.
Yes, the story they weaved was lame and unfair to the hackers who figured it out, but I think they were trying to cover their ass at that point and prevent an Ao rating.
If the killing hookers isn't stopping you, why would this?
well then don't you get it and sit alone for weeks while the rest of us goes out co-opping in liberty-city :-)
What they said ^
Im sure your gonna buy GTAIV... i guarantee it! Now why don't you make that sound a sheep does?
fail juice anyone?
Never was a big GTA fan. Running around "doing whatever you want" is what mainly draws most people in, but I get bored of that REALLY fast in these games. In my opinion. SA was the only good one out of 3 and VC. But my favorite GTA is definitely 1969 London for the PS1.
Anyway...maybe I'll rent it.
Aziel, I'll take some.
lol i'll take some on the rocks aziel.
way to go bans. way to give too much of a shit about something that was one of the crappiest sex mini games i've ever seen. and you're gonna boycott GTA IV because of it? i'm not pissed off. not even angry.
its you who will miss out on the epicness that will be GTA IV, not me.
Yeah, as stated many times above, I don't really give a fuck. If the game is good (which it most likely will be), I'm getting it. The game is all I care about, not the drama surrounding it.
you got a little shit on your mouth there
I will be buying GTAIV and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.
R* owns you.
Aziel, I'll take a cup.
Look, "bans" you're old enough to know right from wrong, right? Okay, Rockstar did fuck up initially by not admitting they put the code in there, but that may have been less of a sneaky action, and more of a "o-shit" moment when they realized a day or two later that they had in fact, left it in the game when it wasn't intended to be. I'd lay odds that someone got fired that day.
Where you're wrong is assuming that it's some sort of "cheat" that was used to flip on and off the hot coffee mode. Cheating devices such as Action Replay or Game Shark circumvent the code. The files that make up the Hot Coffee stuff are NOT a part of the general code. Let's say you had 30 programs that all used the same subset of textures, animations, character interactions, whatever. You have your offending content in that subset of code. If you remove part of this code, you risk breaking the whole subset of code, which might include relevant gameplay of some sort. When they decided to excise the mod from the main game, odds are this code was kept intact to preserve the overall structure of the code and was shuttered from general access. No ways in, no ways out.
Here comes along the Action Replay/coffee mods out the wazoo, they're accessing forbidden content. They would have to move the code PAST the roadblocks they set up, and in doing so, change the code, which is NOT a cheat, but a circumvention of the code set in place. A cheat implies that the path to the gameplay was preset in the code, and it has been stated many times that code has to be altered to gain access to this content.
Also, you're a fucktard to try and draw comparisons to Stockholm's Syndrome to Rockstar's involvement with Hot Coffee.
They put the minigame in there, scrapped it and someone found it and unlocked it by breaking the game's finished code.
You know another company you could draw this same ridiculous assumption over? Disney.
You know what horrible thing they did back in 1977 that screwed them over so badly that they only made Billions of dollars over the years for ruining children's animation through a mistake left in their films?
Oh sweet fancy Moses! NO!
Not Disney! Can't ever buy from them again.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rescuers.asp
They stuck nudity in The Rescuers.
They left it in there after someone put it in a background shot. That bit of animation made it through 22 years of not being noticed or referenced by Disney. What did they do? They did a recall. Disney seems to have recovered quite nicely.
For the morons out there, this is Brad Bird and his Oscar for Ratatouille.
I will happily buy it if there's a PC version. The controversy never really mattered to me, I still bought the game and thought it was fun.
Wow dude...total fail.
Talk about turning a molehill in to Mt Everest.
This has failure written all over it. Where do I begin?