A California politician is demanding that the video game rating authority deem the game suitable for adults only.
Rockstar North, maker of “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” the all-time best-selling game on the PlayStation2 format, has so far declined to comment on the discovery of the hardcore content, but the consensus among gaming industry press is that the scenes are part of the original game code that was locked rather than removed from the commercial release.
Discovered by modders — PC users who hack into game code in search of shortcuts and tricks hidden by developers — the graphic animations show what happens when a male character successfully seduces a female character, including depictions of oral sex and intercourse in various positions.
The modification can be found easily through Internet searches for “Hot Coffee Mod,” but unlocking the scenes does require some work and special software.
California Assembly Speaker Tom Leland Yee blamed the Entertainment Software Rating Board for not catching the naughty bits. “Once again, ESRB has failed our parents,” Yee said. “This particular game has been known to contain extremely heinous acts of violence, and now it has been uncovered that the game also includes explicit sexual scenes.”
Yee emphasized that he had on numerous occasions asked the Entertainment Software Rating Board to give the game an Adults Only rating based purely on its violence, and said if the organization had done so, it could have eliminated the possibility of children accessing the newly discovered sexual content.
The Adults Only rating has generally been a kiss of death for video games because many large retailers refuse to carry them. Yee already has proposed legislation to police the gaming industry and bring the rating system under government control.
