Hot Coffee Claimants Receive Compensation

$5? We guess it's more about the principle of the thing.

Posted by Staff
Thankfully, this chap's not involved in the Hot Coffee controversy.
Thankfully, this chap's not involved in the Hot Coffee controversy.
Owners of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas who applied to receive compensation for the Hot Coffee controversy are beginning to get their cheques in the mail. Gamers are informing Kotaku that they have been sent a cheque from Take-Two, for the princely sum of five U.S. dollars.

The money comes with a letter informing the recipient of Take-Two's commitment to "voluntarily fulfill all properly-submitted claims," even though the court "decided not to certify a settlement class." How nice.

'Hot Coffee' was the term branded to a particular scenario in the 2004 GTA game, that could be found by either modifying the PC version or entering cheat codes into the PS2 version. It allowed the player to participate in uncensored, highly explicit sex scenes.

Take-Two argued that the code was not meant for public use, but in 2007 agreed to voluntarily pay compensation to end a hefty class action lawsuit. The results are only just beginning to show now, with game owners receiving between $5 USD and $35 USD.

The GTA Class Action Settlement website notes that "All those who filed claims for benefits prior to the May 16, 2008, deadline will receive those benefits prior to April 15, 2010."
Companies:
Games: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Comments

DrkStr 30 Mar 2010 13:06
1/5
So idiots who modified their consoles, entered cheat codes or patched their PC games and were then "offended" are getting paid for being such idiots?

And the only "uncensored, highly explicit sex scenes" were on the patched PC version, other than that you and the girlfriends were all with clothes.
Tamikaze 30 Mar 2010 13:39
2/5
Because the very first version on the Playstation 2 didn't need to be hacked/modified because they could access it anyway, they are only offering the refund to people who had those PS2 games.
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DrkStr 30 Mar 2010 18:06
3/5
Tamikaze wrote:
Because the very first version on the Playstation 2 didn't need to be hacked/modified because they could access it anyway, they are only offering the refund to people who had those PS2 games.

I think you're mis-remembering. The fist version on PS2 was recalled afetr getting the AO rating applied to it in the US. That was the version that needed modded consoles or maybe cheat codes. After the re-issue there was no way of getting to the hot coffee because the code wasn't even on the disk.
ECM 30 Mar 2010 21:54
4/5
It was originally rated M in the USA. After black coffee, err, spilled, it was recalled OR retailers could just slap an AO sticker over the M and keep right on selling it.
Tamikaze 31 Mar 2010 00:05
5/5
@DrkStr
Ahh thank you for correcting me.
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