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Rockstar's Houser: Hot Coffee was “draining and upsetting”

Rockstar's VP says Hot Coffee wouldn't have mattered in a book or movie

In an interview with the Guardian, Rockstar vice president Dan Houser lamented the studio's legal trouble over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' Hot Coffee. The sexual minigame was hidden inside the game's source code and when hackers unlocked the mode, the Federal Trade Commission came down on Rockstar hard.

"It was draining and upsetting - a tough time in the company," House told the Guardian. "The massive social decay that we were supposed to induce hasn't happened.”

“So in that regard, a lot of those debates that used to go on, they're not such a big deal now. We never felt that we were being attacked for the content, we were being attacked for the medium, which felt a little unfair. If all of this stuff had been put into a book or a movie, people wouldn't have blinked an eye. And there are far bigger issues to worry about in society than this."

Rockstar parent company Take-Two was forced to settle a class-action lawsuit for $20 million over the Hot Coffee debacle.

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Mike Williams avatar

Mike Williams

Reviews Editor, USgamer

M.H. Williams is new to the journalism game, but he's been a gamer since the NES first graced American shores. Third-person action-adventure games are his personal poison: Uncharted, Infamous, and Assassin's Creed just to name a few. If you see him around a convention, he's not hard to spot: Black guy, glasses, and a tie.

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