Soon, all of Rockstar's PR and marketing people were pulled into a meeting, where they found a brash new PR guy at the table. As Todd Zuniga, a former game journalist who had joined Rockstar as a PR manager, listened to the new PR guy map out his militaristic strategy, he couldn't help but laugh inside. Zuniga ran a humor site on the side and thought the scandal represented the height of absurdity. When he watched the Hot Coffee scene, he thought, “Look at this stupid shit. Why'd they put that in?” Even worse, the new PR guy sure didn't seem like a gamer to him and seemed to “say absolutely nothing and talk to you for an hour,” Zuniga later said. “Why did they bring him in? That's kind of weird. They have no faith in anyone. They think everyone's an idiot.”
As Zuniga said he was instructed, phone calls were to remain unanswered. One caller demanded an answer, however: Pat Vance at the ESRB. After talking with Eibeler, she called Lowenstein and told him the news. “They claimed it was a third party modification,” Vance said. In other words, Take-Two and Rockstar implied that the content was not on the disc but something created by a gamer for fun and released online. Vance, however, wasn't going to take Rockstar's word for it. “We're going to do an investigation,” she told Lowenstein.
“Do what you have to do,” he said.
On July 8, Vance released a statement announcing the ESRB's official investigation into Hot Coffee. “The integrity of the ESRB rating system is founded on the trust of consumers who increasingly depend on it to provide complete and accurate information about what's in a game,” she said. “If after a thorough and objective investigation of all the relevant facts surrounding this modification, we determine a violation of our rules has occurred, we will take appropriate action.” What that action would be, they didn't know. Nothing like this had happened before.
With news of the investigation, Hot Coffee became the biggest scandal ever to hit the game press. This was like their very own Watergate—Coffeegate, some joked—starring the most notorious and guarded publisher in the business. “Today, one of the most popular recent game industry rumors showed signs of turning into a very real scandal,” GameSpot reported.
Yet Rockstar seemed to be implying that the sex scene had been the creation of modders, not them. “We also feel confident that the investigation will uphold the original rating of the game, as the work of the mod community is beyond the scope of either publishers or the ESRB,” the company said in a statement.
“Was the Hot Coffee code included on the game discs manufactured by Rockstar?” a writer for GameSpot asked a Rockstar PR representative that day.
“No,” the PR rep answered.
As news of the investigation spread, politicians moved in. A young aide served up Hot Coffee to his boss, California state assemblyman and Democrat Leland Yee, one of the growing ranks of politicians who were sponsoring bills to outlaw the sale of Mature-rated games to minors. “It's outrageous,” Yee said. “It tells you how to copulate a woman. That should not be in the hands of children.”
Along with the National Institute on Media and the Family, Yee demanded that the ESRB slap San Andreas with the dreaded Adults Only rating. Rerating or altering the game would be a massive undertaking, requiring Rockstar to recall millions of products at a cost of surely tens of millions of dollars—not to mention banning it from major retailers. Yee had his own solution, AB 450, a bill to ban violent video games from being sold to minors.
Back at Take-Two, CEO Paul Eibeler struggled to keep up with the scandal. “It just spun out of control,” he later said. “It was a politician's goldmine.” There was a great irony at play. GTA was a scandal invented by a publicist in England, brought to America, where it became real. Now the people outside the United States were seeing this as a joke. Eibeler's colleagues in Europe couldn't believe the concerns in America over the scene. “The Europeans were laughing,” he recalled. “You're worried about some graphics that some hacker opened up and had sexual innuendo?”
To ease the minds of the already weary Take-Two board, Eibeler sent them a memo reassuring them that “these modifications are not possible on retail Xbox or PlayStation consoles.” This implied that the scene was not on the disc at all, which, of course, wasn't true—though it was unclear how much Eibeler knew at that moment. A follow-up memo from him the next day, however, acknowledged that mods had been found online for the consoles.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Wildenborg's once-quiet home had been turned upside down. Within a month of its release, the Hot Coffee code had been downloaded more than one million times. Dutch TV camped outside his house. The phone rang nonstop with calls from the press around the world: CNN, the New York Times, ABC News. With his wife panicking as her young kids played, they soon took the phone off the hook. “We didn't know what was happening or how it would influence our future,” Wildenborg later said. As a precaution, he told his boss what was going on. His boss referred Wildenborg to his lawyers—just in case.
When asked by the Associated Press about Rockstar's denial of having put the sex scene on the disc, Wildenborg lashed out. “If Rockstar denies that, then they're lying, and I will be able to prove that,” he said. “My mod does not introduce anything to the game. All that content that is shown was already present on the DVD.”
Wildenborg wasn't fighting off only the press, but other modders, too. Some resented Wildenborg talking smack about Rockstar. “Seriously, Patrick,” wrote one modder in the online forums, “are you trying to dig them in deeper? They've denied it because they really don't want the game being re-rated as AO. If the game gets re-rated as AO, it'll hurt their sales, and they'll care less about modding in future games.” The modder suggested telling the press that the content wasn't in the original game. “It might be bending the truth a little,” he wrote, “but it's better than going against Rockstar.”
“I don't think R* should have to go it alone,” another modder agreed. “This is every gamer in the US's problem if the soccer moms get the game b& [banned].”
“The last thing I want is to get rockstar into problems,” Wildenborg replied, but “. . . If R* denies that the content was on the disc, they basicly say I've been a liar all along (and a pr0n producer).” Yet the modders convinced him in the end. Wildenborg just wanted his life, and his hobby, back and agreed to stick by Rockstar's side. “I think the next time a journalist asks a question,” he wrote, “I won't be answering his questions, but just issue a R* friendly statement.”
Together, the modders strategized on how best to distract the media. One suggested pitting them against Sam's old rival, Electronic Arts, instead. Modders, they knew, had recently created a program to make characters in the EA game The Sims naked. Why not just point that out—even though it wasn't analogous to Rockstar putting the sex scene in its own game? At least, it would be a diversion.
When the New York Times e-mailed Wildenborg for an interview, he panicked, worrying that his broken English would do him in. So he had a friend compose what he described in the modder forums as an “exceptional Rockstar friendly reply,” including a dig at The Sims, which he sent to the paper in reply. “At the end of the day,” the Times quoted Wildenborg as saying, “Grand Theft Auto is not a game for young children, and is rated accordingly.”
On July 11, the day the Times story ran, Wildenborg's phone rang. Wearily, he answered, but it wasn't the press this time. The caller said he was from Rockstar Games. Wildenborg's heart raced. What did they want with him? He asked for an e-mail address for verification. Sure enough, when he got a reply from the Rockstar address, he knew this was real. When he phoned back, the caller told Wildenborg how much Rockstar appreciated the quote on his website and, specifically, the part where he said that Hot Coffee was only playable when the game was modified. Oh, and they wanted to give a heads up. “We're going to issue a statement tomorrow,” the caller said. “You shouldn't worry too much about it.”
Wildenborg hung up with a sigh. “I felt relief that not too much consequences personally, that they weren't suing,”
he later said. The next day, Rockstar put out a statement finally addressing the scandal in full. There would have been one way to come clean: to admit, in clear language, that the sex scene was on the disc but had been cut and not intended for release. Rockstar could say truthfully there was no intention to deceive the ESRB or pervert the minds of the world's youth at all. Yet instead of being forthright, they seemed to throw the modders under the bus.
“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,” the statement read. “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' mod.”
Game sites across the Net seized the answer. “Well, that's pretty damn clear,” reported the popular blog Kotaku, under the headline “Rockstar Official Denies Making Hot Coffee.” Kotaku continued, “To summarize: We had nothing to do with it. Now we just have to wait and see what the investigations into the mod in the U.S. and Australia find. I'm pretty sure it will be easy to determine who's telling the truth and who's lying and man is someone gonna get in trouble when they do.”
The modders, however, knowing the truth, felt incensed. Despite all of their efforts, their years of loyalty, this was how Rockstar repaid them? “R* are a bunch of fuckign [sic] retards,” wrote one modder online. “They're now trying to demonise modding and make us out to be the bad guys. It's completely fucking stupid, and completely fucking pointless.”
“They can't possibly have expected us not to find it eventually, if not Patrick, someone else later,” wrote one modder of Hot Coffee. “It was just a matter of time with this one.” Another wrote that “they are outright lying and trying to discredit Patrick from what I can see. I'm also sure heads will roll at Rockstar for leaving all that unused content in the game.”
Within Rockstar, people were just as amazed by the press release. “You've got to be fucking kidding me,” said Foreman, who read it while he was in Scotland visiting Rockstar North. Well aware of the truth behind Hot Coffee, he considered the press release “a huge miscalculation.” After so many futile attempts to argue and change things, he thought it was pointless to talk with the Housers and Donovan about it now. Instead, he looked at the other gamers and cracked up. “What could we do?” he recalled. “We sat around and laughed about it.”
Eibler later said, “It wasn't the best written press release.” The Hot Coffee scandal confirmed all of the hysterical, overblown suspicions about Grand Theft Auto, and Rockstar's publicity department, which in the past had displayed an uncanny knack for building brand mystique, only seemed to exacerbate the outrage. “Blaming it on hackers was a colossal PR screw-up,” Corey Wade later said. “It was a complete disaster. . . . They lied.”
“They released that bullshit quote about how this is an act of hackers, which is completely comical,” Zuniga agreed. “We were, like, ‘This company is run by arrogant English people. What the fuck was that statement? Why don't we tell the truth?'”
Work on Rockstar's games screeched to a halt. Approval for ads and publicity plans got derailed. Screenshots sat on computers awaiting sign-off. With the statement out, talking points were drawn up for the PR team—the plan was to spin this as an attack on the game industry by political conservatives out to undermine the industry. When Rolling Stone called, asking whether the creators of the sex scene were at Rockstar, the PR rep bristled. “They're not within the company,” he said, then began to chastise the magazine. “One of our concerns with this story is that it might add to the confusion of people who don't understand how the industry works,” he said.
Zuniga couldn't believe this ploy to cast Rockstar as victims. “These people are trying to undermine video gaming?” he asked dubiously. “It's an attack on the game industry?” He knew this was far from the truth. As one journalist told him, “This isn't attack on the game industry, you fucked up.”
While Take-Two tried to placate the board and Rockstar struggled to manipulate the press, Rockstar also tried to repair damage with the modders it had so unceremoniously left behind. On July 13, an e-mail allegedly from Rockstar with the subject heading “Confidential—Private Statement to the GTA Mod Community” unexpectedly arrived in modders' in-boxes around the world. “I'm a bit disappointed that they only want to support us in private communication,” one modder responded, “but that's probably because of pr, and it's better than nothing.”
“We are sure that by now you are all aware of the media furor surrounding the ‘hot coffee' mod,” the e-mail read. “Several long-time critics of video games are using it to renew their attacks on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in particular and video games in general. Our critics are using the opportunity to distort Grand Theft Auto and suggest that games do [not] deserve to be treated the same as other forms of media. Therefore, we have been forced to counter their arguments.
“Unfortunately for the gaming community, elements of the mainstream media don't cover technology or new media well, and they can be especially bad with subtle details. As we defend the game and stress the delineation between the official retail version and the alterations to the code, we want you to know we continue to respect and admire the creativity involved in creating mods. The strength of the mod community proves that Grand Theft Auto will always have more fans than critics, and we wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate our gratitude. We will always admire the passion and technical brilliance of the mod community. Thank you for your notes of support, and thank you for not letting the personal agendas of our critics get in the way of your enthusiasm for Grant Theft Auto: San Andreas.
“We are disappointed by the way the media have misrepresented Grand Theft Auto and detracted from the innovative and artistic merits of the game. But the biggest problem with all of this is that it serves to widen the gap between people who create and play games and people who don't. Critics create these controversies to undermine the rating system and to create a public appetite for censorship and extreme regulation. Indeed, the existence of a rating system is a fact our critics ignore as much as they ignore the fact that gaming is now an entertainment medium enjoyed predominantly by adults.
“Thank-you again for your support.
“Rockstar Games.”
21
Adults Only
ESRB CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
NUDITY—Graphic or prolonged depictions of nudity.
PARTIAL NUDITY—Brief and/or mild depictions of nudity.
SEXUAL CONTENT—Non-explicit depictions of sexual behavior, possibly including partial nudity.
SEXUAL THEMES—References to sex or sexuality.
SEXUAL VIOLENCE—Depictions of rape or other violent sexual acts.
STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT—Explicit and/or frequent depictions of sexual behavior, possibly including nudity.
When Jack Thompson heard about Hot Coffee, he saw more than steam rising from a cup, he saw a smoking gun. For years, he had been banging his war drum about game makers marketing objectionable content to kids. With Hot Coffee, there would be no speculating anymore. If the scene really was on the disc, then everything he had ever warned the world about would suddenly be justified. He couldn't be called crazy anymore. He'd be right.
Thompson called his longtime ally in the culture war, David Walsh of the National Institute of Media and Family. The more Walsh listened, however, the more dubious he became.
“You don't have to agree with me,” Thompson replied, when Walsh divulged his concerns. “I'm the lawyer, you're the psychologist. You just do your research, and I'll take care of getting these games banne
d.” Thompson urged him to move fast on Hot Coffee. “Dave,” he said, “I think this is a big deal because if they put that in there, not only is it fraud, but it's distribution of sexual material to minors.”
Putting his differences with Thompson aside, Walsh issued what he called a “National Parental Warning” about Hot Coffee. “While San Andreas is already full of violent behavior and sexual themes, the pornographic sex scenes push it over the edge,” he warned in a statement. “Can you imagine the impact of 13, 14 and 15 year old boys literally enacting this scene?”
Thompson's phone rang later, but it wasn't Walsh. It was the office of Senator Hillary Clinton. “The senator wants to do a press conference on Hot Coffee,” Thompson was told, “and we need you to prep her.”
Clinton was no stranger to GTA. In March, she had delivered a speech to the Kaiser Family Foundation about the impact of violent media on children, which she called a “silent epidemic.” She singled out Grand Theft Auto, she said, “which has so many demeaning messages about women and so encourages violent imagination and activities and it scares parents. . . . They're playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them. You know, that's kind of hard to digest.”
Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto Page 22