12 Controversial Video Game Scandals That Rocked The Industry

4. Hot Coffee - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Oh, Rockstar, sometimes I think you like courting controversy - I mean there's no such thing as bad press, especially when you need to get as many eyeballs on your games as possible.

Enter the 'Hot Coffee mod', a piece of code left on the disc for GTA: San Andreas, which let you take any of the various women you could date in the game to bed. Y'know, for sex. Fully clothed, awkwardly-animated, mannequin-like sex.

Rockstar clearly thought against the idea during development but somehow left the scenes in the game regardless, meaning they were promptly unearthed by PC players looking through San Andreas' code. This riled up the forever-infuriated 'soccer moms' and reactionary tabloid types, as not only was Little Timmy already being 'exposed' to a disgusting, violent video game, but now there were hidden sex scenes.

A call was put out for GTA to receive an AO rating (that which denotes something is for 'Adults Only', like retail pornography) which the ESRB actually granted, declaring that "sexually explicit material [does] exist in a fully rendered, unmodified form", despite this not being the case without extensive modding and know-how.

Regardless, Rockstar admitted their blunder and cleaned up all future pressings of the disc, which reverted the game back to a 'Mature (18)' rating... just long enough after the outcry for sales to go through the roof all over again.