Following a week of scrutiny and controversy, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board announced Friday (November 2) that the video game "Manhunt 2" will not be re-rated back to its original Adults Only status.
"Manhunt 2" was released this week. On Wednesday, Halloween, news broke that Russian hackers had found a way to alter the code of the PSP version of the game in such a way that would remove obscuring special effects from some of the game's more gruesome kills. These modifications, which involved dumping the game's code onto PC and changing a few programming lines, prompted calls from the Parents Television Council and California State Senator Leland Yee to revert the rating of the game to the AO rating that delayed its original June release.
"We do not believe these modifications fully restore the product to the version that originally received an AO rating, nor is this a matter of unlocking content," ESRB President Patricia Vance said during a Friday afternoon conference call with reporters. "We have investigated the matter and concluded that unauthorized versions of the game have been released on the Internet along with instructions on how to modify the code to remove the special effects. ... Our investigation indicates that the game's publisher disclosed to the ESRB all pertinent content in the authorized Mature-rated version of 'Manhunt 2' now available in stores, and complied with our guidelines on full disclosure of content."
When MTV News asked if the ESRB were aware that the content in question was still on a disc, accessible by hackers, Vance cited her group's experience in receiving modified versions of games from publishers that tweaked their games for different ratings. "We make assumptions that those modifications that are being made are secure, that companies have taken reasonable measures to secure that those modifications can't be reverted, and we made that assumption in this case."
Did Vance feel that the ESRB made the correct assumption this time? "No matter what measures you take, it seems that hackers will find ways to get into content and modify it. We're not security police here. We're here to inform consumers about content. We put the responsibility on publishers to create code and program the games so that they operate effectively and to make sure the consumers are informed about the games they are playing. In this particular case you're dealing with unauthorized software that's being released, unauthorized uses of that software. Certainly I don't think the ESRB should be held responsible, and I don't know to what extent you can hold the publisher responsible. These are acts of third parties and are unauthorized."
"Manhunt 2" development studio Rockstar Games and publisher Take-Two Interactive Software confirmed the hack of the game on Thursday, according to GamePolitics.com. In a statement to the site, Take-Two Interactive Chairman Strauss Zelnick said, "I stand behind the game and the ESRB ratings process. It is unfortunately the case that no one in the entertainment-software industry is immune from hacking. We hope that consumers will not engage in hacking or download illegally modified copies of our games. We encourage them to enjoy our games as they are meant to be played. We would also like to emphasize that 'Manhunt 2' is intended for an audience aged 17 and above."
Vance said this situation differed from the 2005 "Hot Coffee" scandal in which a half-finished sex game was unearthed in the code of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" by a hacker in the Netherlands.
"That involved a scene that was fully rendered in an unmodified form on the disc," Vance said. "In other words, the Hot Coffee mod didn't alter the content that was there — it merely unlocked it. Secondly, that content that was unlocked had not been disclosed to the ESRB during the ratings process. Thirdly the modification was easily accessible to all of the PC owners of the game."
While Vance is accurate to note that the "Hot Coffee" mod did unlock the somewhat playable sex scene, the characters in it were fully clothed. Hackers later tweaked the characters in the scene to make them appear undressed.
Vance said that the investigation involved the PSP and PS2 versions. The more highly publicized Wii version of the game was not investigated, presumably because it was not mentioned in the Russian hack.
