In a rather comedic turn of events, California State Assembly member Leland Yee has issued a statement condemning the ESRB for "failing to appropriately rate Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". If you haven't read (or guessed) already, yes, this has to do with ye olde Hot Coffee mod for the PC version of San An. In his press release (which you can read here, Mr. Yee had the following to say:
| Once again, ESRB has failed our parents. This particular game has been known to include extremely heinous acts of violence, and now it has been uncovered that the game also includes explicit sexual scenes that are inappropriate for our children. I have urged the ESRB on numerous occasions to rate this game AO based on its blatantly graphic nature. |
So, by his logic, I suppose the ESRB not only has to rate games by the content they contain, but also psychically by the potential content that could be modified by the users well after the game has shipped? If that's the case, then maybe all PC games should be burned in massive Fahrenheit 451-esque fires seeing as most of them can (and are) edited by users to include extra sex and violence? In fact, why stop there? Surely all digital media is within a handful of manipulated bytes from being hardcore porn! Or, like I said to Mr. Yee in the friendly e-mail I just sent his way....
| While I applaud your concern for keeping mature-rated entertainment out of the hands of children, legislating what would effectively be a total ban on a game based on content created by users is akin to banning the printing press because some miscreant may or may not produce something obscene with it. |
*sigh*
Props to IGN for spotting this.
