GTA: San Andreas Gets Adults Only Rating
- July 20, 2005 17:44 PM PST
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Rockstar to release a different version of the game, presumably removing the hidden adult content.
The ESRB announced today that it changed the rating from Mature to Adults Only for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Publisher Rockstar Games has said that it stopped making the current version and is working on a newer version--undoubtedly with the sex mini-game code removed.Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive for the first time went on record that the sex min-games were built into the retail versions of the games. The company originally stated that the mini-games were the result of dramatic reverse engineering by hackers.
"There is sex content in the disc," said Take-Two spokesman Jim Ankner. "The editing and finalization of any game is a complicated task and it's not uncommon for unused and unfinished content to remain on the disc."
In response to the latest fiasco, Rockstar will offer new rating labels to allow retailers to sell existing inventory. In addition, the company will also release a downloadable patch for the PC version to remove the adult content from the game.
Bumping up to rating to Adults Only (the NC-17 equivalent in gaming) will hurt sales of the company's top seller, and not surprisingly Take-Two has lowered the guidance for the third fiscal quarter ending July 31, 2005. Net sales is project to be $160 to $170 million, and a net loss per share of $(0.40) to $(0.45) to "provide reserves for the value of the title's current North American retail inventory." Accordingly, guidance for the fiscal year ending October 31, 2005 has also been lowered to $1.26 to $1.31 billion in net sales and $1.05 to $1.12 in diluted earnings per share.
How will this impact future M-rated games? Given that the controversy stirred from hidden content, it may not impact future M-rated titles. On the flip side, the added attention toward Mature games may cause more stringent checks by the ESRB and watchdog organizations to prevent similar incidents.
Rockstar echoes the concern, saying in an official release, "the ESRB's decision to re-rate a game based on an unauthorized third party modification presents a new challenge for parents, the interactive entertainment industry and anyone who distributes or consumes digital content."
