http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/22/news_6129609.html

So, Rockstar admitted they left the "sex scenes" in their game (does this surprise anyone?), but now apparently the Sims are ten times worse than GTA.

Thompson doesn't buy it. "The sex and the nudity are in the game. That's the point. The blur is an admission that even the 'Ken and Barbie' features should not be displayed. The blur can be disarmed. This is no different than what is in San Andreas, although worse."

[UPDATE] Thompson this afternoon updated his earlier statement, saying he is aware certain mods only remove "the blur," but adds that "Electronic Arts has done nothing about this." Thompson's new conclusion: EA is "cooperating, gleefully, with the mod community to turn Sims 2 into a **** offering."

I wonder what lurks in the bowels of EQ? :D

soon we'll find out the the patched in new models years ago with the graphical problems was condoning nudity and EQ will have to be rated AO =p

That man needs to be kicked out of the united states.

Thompson is just being an ass and trying to gain more popularity. Next he's going to sue Mattel cause kids are able to fully decloth barbie....

Blizzard had better watch out...
http://www.big-boys.com/articles/nudewow.html

I do not understand why game companies do not sell "strap ons" *snicker* which is a play on the work add on. These would be adult only material and I bet they could more on these modified graphic files than they do on the original game sale. This would keep them out of legal hot water as well.

As a woman, I have mixed emotions about all this. On one hand I have always thought it so silly that any game with a male warrior shows him in full armor but a female warrior in the same game is in a metal mesh bikini. I would like to play a game where the female chars actually wear clothes that cover their body for a change. BUT.... I would GLADLY play a game where my character wandered naked with breasts so large a bra would never fit, if it meant that the game would be off limits to the mentally underaged. :D

And WoW doesn't bother me too much. If you get excited to see a naked troll.... well then you've got more problems than a game patch could fix... and the humans are pretty tacky looking in WoW so....

If Ford sold cars with poronographic magazines hidden inside the seating it would be inexcusable. There's no excuse for leaving ****ographic content latent in software either.

I find it hard to believe that EA have much latent ****ography in the Sims though. GTA is a pretty sleazy product and probably deserves a high teen rating anyway.

Its a good thing he didn't see the things the testers did to the Sims when EA was testing Sims 1.

/shrug if the ESRB is going to be totally anal about GTA and let the Sims slide it sure does show the double standards. Maybe Rockstar needs to secretly reform as Bubbly Happy Bunnies or something.

If Ford sold cars with poronographic magazines hidden inside the seating ...
... Ford would sell A LOT MORE CARS!

If Ford sold cars with poronographic magazines hidden inside the seating it would be inexcusable. There's no excuse for leaving ****ographic content latent in software either.

I find it hard to believe that EA have much latent ****ography in the Sims though. GTA is a pretty sleazy product and probably deserves a high teen rating anyway.


If Ford sold cars with nudie pics in the seating, noone would find them.

With regard to naked folks in video games, I can only imagine that every character model in a game is first created "nude" prior to adding the "wardrobe" for individual characters. Nude like barbie.

Personally, if your kid is smart enough to hack, or locate and load, a hack just so he can see what he'd see if he took the clothes off his sister's barbie's, he probably can find **** on his own.

And, in the end, people need to not give a **** about ****, period, let alone digital ****.

As for GTA, it already had higher than teen, it was released with an M rating.

Well, I found mods for games that let you change their bodies and clothes and stuff. It was a good thing because the characters were so piss poorly drawn. They were all ugly! At one point I had truly naked barbarians running through the snow trying to attack me with their large weapons... axes! I mean axes!

I read the article linked by Woody from GuComics about <a href="http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3142343">eBay auctions</a> of GTA:SA being in the "Mature Adult" cats. only.

biatch woman is now trying to sue Rockstar Games cause she baught the rated 'M' (17+ only) game for her 14 year old boy unknow of the hidden adult content.....http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/07/27/game.lawsuit.ap/index.html

Finally someone is speaking out against theses moronic claims.


“This is nonsense,” said Jeff Brown, spokesman for EA. “Reasonable people understand there is nothing improper in the game. Reasonable people recognise what mods are. A consumer who chooses to use a mod does so without any kind of agreement with the company. There is no nudity. There is nothing improper or vulgar in the Sims 2.”

Brown continued, “Reasonable people understand the San Jose Mercury News is not responsible for vulgar things that people doodle into the margins of the paper.”

Here is where I found it http://spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=8961

The game has a rating for a reason. Parents who bought the game for their kids without looking at it are stupid. There is nothing wrong with the game, would I buy it for my kids hell no they are too young.
I'm tired of these parents for morality groups trying to get government to regulate everything. The kids that got the code probably downloaded it without the parents knowing what they were doing. While waiting for the download possibly cruising **** sites because the computer is in the kids bedroom and parents don't want to be nosey. Its the PARENTS job to check this stuff out, not some morality group or the government.

Amen Leafblower! Preach it Brotha!

HeHe it would be Sista though :)

I am confused as to how they're diffrent. Modder turns on nudity/sex scene and everyone freaks out, modder turns off nudity/sex scene censor and it's ok?

HeHe it would be Sista though

*blush* oops, sorry.

As for how they're different:

Parent buys game for kid. Game company says THEIR SOFTWARE does not contain nudity (or whatever).

Kid gets game at home. Kid downloads THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, which makes game contain nudity (or whatever).

It is not the fault of the game company if the user is downloading third party software to modify the game's software. The game company can and should only be held liable for the content which it produces, not the content which someone else produces and which just happens to work with their game.

Parent buys game for kid. Game company says THEIR SOFTWARE does not contain nudity (or whatever).

Kid gets game at home. Kid downloads THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, which makes game contain nudity (or whatever).

It is not the fault of the game company if the user is downloading third party software to modify the game's software. The game company can and should only be held liable for the content which it produces, not the content which someone else produces and which just happens to work with their game.

In both cases they're codes that unlock content in the game. No additional material is added. "To turn off: intProp censorGridSize 0, to turn on: intProp censorGridSize 8" For the Sims 2. They are not like character skins for UT or Quake or full conversions like Red Orchestra.

If developers are hiding content, or writing sloppy code, in there games regardless of when it is discovered the ESRB rating needs to reflect that. I would be surprised if I found out that pressing up down up down left right left right in a DVD menu of a Disney movie started a hidden **** flick, I don't think it would deserve a G rating anymore.

I answered my own question though. The Sims 2 code unlocks “Barbie like features” and Thompson’s claim of “full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair.” is BS, the rating appears to still be appropriate.

I am no lawyer, far from it, but I hope there is no law holding game makers responsible for additional content brought into their game, otherwise good-bye mod community.

I am no lawyer, far from it, but I hope there is no law holding game makers responsible for additional content brought into their game, otherwise good-bye mod community.

I hope there will be law restricting content which can be unlocked in the game or else the ratings system just becomes a mockery. Without it, if you want to put some high rated stuff in a low rated product you'd put it in via a freely available mod code on the web. You'd do it every time. It would make the ratings system worthless.

There needs to be some common sense judgement between user-community mods which the developers are not responsible for, and deliberate evasion of age restrictions which the developers are responsible for.

Rather than attacking the game makers, these people should be attacking the mod makers or the individuals who release the code to unlock whatever. But then, they don't have the deep pockets that the game makers do so the greedy people filing suit would only get satisfaction that they "did the right thing", and that's rarely enough to even get a lawyer interested.

Also, I haven't seen the mods for any of these (except the WoW sex video omigod!), but I can't think that they do anything more than show the undressed base models for the game. Do they make the characters do things that AREN'T controlled by the operator? If not, then these people had better start looking towards how they are raising these kids with their "dirty little minds". ;)

I hate parental figures who have minimal interaction with their kids and then blame everyone else for the kids actions and thoughts. We as a society have been trained so well to avoid personal responsibility for *everything* that happens, from military to politics to child rearing. *sigh* And you KNOW that until the info was publicized, these people had no idea WHAT their kids were up to. Hm... I don't remember seeing a complaint stating that a parent (or grandparent) had actually SEEN their kid playing the game with the mod... just that they were "outraged" because such a thing existed. I wonder now how many are cincensed about *potential* and not reality.

I am no lawyer, far from it, but I hope there is no law holding game makers responsible for additional content brought into their game, otherwise good-bye mod community.Game developers have never been hold responciable for content brought *into* their game. The problem with the Hot Coffee mod is that the content was *already in* the game. The patch just unlocked it.

However, if Thompson gets his way, he'll make game developers responciable for content people put into their games through moding. :(
This is the problem we're facing. If Thompson gets his way, it'll completely alter the gaming industry as we know it.

I hope there will be law restricting content which can be unlocked in the game or else the ratings system just becomes a mockery. Without it, if you want to put some high rated stuff in a low rated product you'd put it in via a freely available mod code on the web. You'd do it every time. It would make the ratings system worthless.

There needs to be some common sense judgement between user-community mods which the developers are not responsible for, and deliberate evasion of age restrictions which the developers are responsible for.

Except that the ratings system isn't law, in and of itself.

Without knowing the details of US law, I'd expect it's illegal to sell or show ****ography to kids regardless of the ratings system. Putting ****ography into a computer game which needs a key code to access, then publicly distributing the key code, is selling ****ography. It's a shame it's been isolated as an anti-**** issue though, as it equally applies to a variety of other restricted content such as torture movies or snuff videos.

Except the scene in GTA wouldn't be considered ****ography in any other venue, from what I understand of it.

The participants are fully clothed and there is no genetelia.

American Pie has more explicit scenes.

Except that the ratings system isn't law, in and of itself.

Hehe the ESRB is what saved video games from being controlled by laws.