Laws of Play

Settlement in Hot Coffee case? I thought you’d never ask.

Take 2 Interactive recently announced that a settlement has been reached in the Hot Coffee Mod class action. Pending final approval from the US Dictrict Court for the Southern District of New York, members of the class will be entitled to exchange their game disc for a new disc without the offending content or recover $35 if they meet several criteria.¹

According to the press release, Take 2 has agreed to spend at least $1.025 million on settlement benefits, and the settlement generally caps the defendants’ out-of-pocket costs at no more than $2.75 million, in addition to the costs of providing notice to class members and paying a fee to plaintiffs’ counsel.

Take 2 CEO, Ben Feder, also commented on the settlement in the press release:

If the case had continued, we believe the court would have agreed that Take-Two was not liable for consumers acting independently to modify their games with third-party hardware and software to access normally inaccessible content… Nonetheless, we believe it is in the best interest of the Company to avoid protracted and costly litigation to prove our case and to finally put this matter behind us.

For the full press release: Take 2 Games

1. The members of the class must swear that they (1) bought a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas before July 20, 2005, (2) were offended and upset by the ability of consumers to modify and alter the game’s content using the third-party Hot Coffee modification, (3) would not have bought the game had they known that consumers could modify and alter the game’s content using the third-party Hot Coffee modification, and (4) would have returned the game, upon learning the game could be modified and altered, if they thought this possible. [↩]