GTA: San Andreas now 'Adults Only'

The Entertainment Software Rating Board completed its investigation of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas's sexually explicit "Hot Coffee" content with the decision to change its rating from "M" (Mature/17+) to "AO" (Adults Only/18+), PC Magazine reports. The decision, which - according to the New York Times - was in response to pressure from Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, effectively removed the game from the shelves of most major retail stores in the US. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that, following the re-rating, "Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart immediately moved to pull the game from their shelves." These developments "could signal the start of a crackdown on raunchy games," according to the Associated Press, which adds that GTA: San Andreas was last year's top console game, selling more than 5.1 million copies in the US, and last month launched Xbox and PC versions (before it ran on PlayStation 2). The game's developer, Rockstar Games, said it would stop making the current version, provide new labels to any retailer willing to keep selling it, and provide a downloadable patch to fix the sexual content in PC versions." It also said it was working on a new, "more secure" version that would win it back the more saleable M rating. This is probably the "tipping point" in a long struggle on the part of policymakers and children's advocates in at least a half dozen states, the District of Columbia, and Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture to protect kids from inappropriate content in videogames (see earlier coverage here, a gaming news roundup, and here, about where responsibility for protecting young gamers lies).