'Grand Theft Auto' gets adult-only rating

Following intense pressure from politicians and media watch groups, the video game industry on Wednesday changed the rating of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"--a best-selling game in which explicit sexual content can be unlocked with an Internet download--from "M" for mature to "AO" for adults-only. Retailers said they would immediately pull all copies from their shelves.

The parent company of the game's producer, Rockstar Games, also admitted for the first time that the sex scenes had been built into the retail version of the that game--not just the PC version but also those written for Xbox and PlayStation2 consoles, according to The Associated Press. The news got bloggers on all sides of the issue typing away.

Blog community response:

"It strikes me as ironic that murder, mayhem, gangs and drugs are OK in a game, but S-E-X knocks it into 'Adult' territory. At any rate, good riddance."
--Maraca

"This is probably the worst possible thing to have happened for the video game industry, for its ratings board, and for parents' faith in the reliability of video game ratings and the faith in the sincerity of the people who make video games, when those people say they actually want to protect kids from inappropriate content."
--By the way...

"It's sad to see the (Entertainment Software Rating Board) cowtow to political pressure like this. In the age of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and people buying music they can't even copy from one machine to another, someone can take an existing game, modify it into porn, and cost a company a few million in sales. None of this had any legal standing, but the ESRB just set a completely inane precedent. Brilliant."
--Cathode Tan