I have been arguing this in way too many forums lately and I don't have time to make a lengthy post here at this time. So instead, I will quote the people from these many forums to try and explain to people how things in the game developing industry work.
First, a solid defense of Rockstar from your very own Revenantae:
[quote name='Revenantae']Now, I've heard a lot of people whining that "R* left Hot Coffee in!!!!1!1!" and therefore deserve to be castigated. Let me point out a few things, and give you an analogy that illustrates the absurdity of this.
I happen to be a programmer by trade, and I know a thing or two about adding and removing code. Depending on where a piece of code lies, and what things it ties into, snipping it out is not necessarily as easy as it sounds. In some cases, disabling a function is far easier than removing it, and when deadlines loom, you do what you need to do to hit the deadline.
Second, were not arguing about something left in that was obviously intended for use. Look at the MASSIVE number of codes left in every GTA since 3. If they give you codes for everything from tire size, to pedestrian weapon carrying, don't you think there would be a code for Hot Coffee if they REALLY wanted it to be accessible? There isn't, they didn't.
So now we have to look at the liability of Rock*. Let's say I film a movie (for direct to DVD of course) with some "questionable content" in it. When I take my film to the MPAA for rating, they tell me I'm getting an X, the kiss of death. So the MPAA and I work together to identify cuts and edits that could be made to achieve an R rating. (As an aside, this is exactly what happens in the movie industry). I modify my film, and ship it that way. Now, someone else gets hold of the footage I cut, and adds it back to the film, shows it to a lawyer and the lawsuits begin.
Is it really fair to go back and retroactively rate my film as an X? Yes, I did film the original footage, but I took steps to remove it from view. I did what was reasonable to be sure the average joe wouldn't see the stuff that would have earned my film an X.
Rock* did the same thing. It isn't, despite many people's claims here, reasonable to assume your code will be reverse engineered, put back into a state that changes it's rating, disseminated, and then screamed about so loudly that it's universal dissemination is unavoidable.
IMHO the press has a LOT to answer for in this one. If it weren't for all the "front page" coverage, I'd never have known the MOD existed. Neither would most of you. Neither would the precious children that Clinton and her ilk are working so hard to protect from it.[/QUOTE]
Next, I give you an account describing the workload required to completely remove a mini-game by BMKane:
[quote name='BMKane']In response to people saying that the developers are responsible for leaving the content in there, they didn't really have much of a choice. I mean, coding an aspect of the game out and removing its art and map assets entirely are two very different things. In order to completely remove it from the game files, they'd have to selectively remove specific animations, go through and find all the dialogue associated with it that is specific to that section alone, and remove it, take out textures, maps, triggers, and a nice chunk of code. It'd be a rediculous waste of time, compared to just changing a couple lines of code or script to bypass it. Almost all games released have random stuff squirreled away inside them, because the developers decided to cut it. They can't be expected to spend a ton of extra time--while on a deadline, mind you--just to avert potential problems that could occur as a result of illegal and/or unsanctioned hacking of their game.[/QUOTE]
The Coop defends BMKane's statements:
[quote name='The Coop']Wait...
I thought a lot of people knew this. I'm no programmer, but I know that digging something out of a game's coding is far more complicated than just going in and deleting it. You have to remove all parts of it... graphically, aurally, and coding-wise. It's a lot simpler to just add a few lines of code to skip over the event, than it is to go in and remove everything associated with that event.
Take Streets of Rage 3. In Japan (where it's called Bare Knuckle 3), there's a character named Ash, who is a flamingly stereotypical leather clad gay man (pointed toes and all) like something from the Blue Oyster Bar in the "Police Academy" movies. This character was "removed" from the US version for obvious reasons, as the shit storm that would have befallen Sega would have been massive for having a character so blatantly portrayed like that. However, Ash wasn't removed... he was "coded over". If you use a Game Genie, you can put him back in the game, and even play as him (though it does make the game very glitchy).
The point? There are likely many games that still have various original "ideas" buried in their code, as the programmers never removed them for whatever reason (time constraints, laziness, etc.). We've only heard of a few of them.[/QUOTE]
... and again:
[quote name='GA Jedi Knight']Question: Do you have any programming experience? Because it sounds to me that you don't. Programming isn't as simple as it seems. Programming something on the scale of GTA is damn hard, and fixing glitches is, quite frankly, much harder in some cases. Why? Because not only do you have to find the glitches in the game, you then have to isolate the code that is causing the glitch. That in itself takes up a lot of time, because sometimes what seems to be the problem actually isn't, and it's actually something else entirely. Then you have to find THAT and fix it. And fixing the problem is no walk in the park. You have to determine the exact reason the code isn't working, find code that won't have that problem, and also make sure the new code won't conflict with the rest of the game. And then you have to test it out again once it's been put in. Sometimes that new code makes a NEW problem, and you have to do the process of fixing the code all over again. One glitch can turn into many many many many hours, even days of work. Imagine how long it takes to fix every glitch, even WITH a team of people working on it.
And that's another thing. The whole team issue is that when you fix a glitch, you have to make sure that not only does the rest of the code stay unaffected, but also you have to work with the others in order to keep it from conflicting with the rest of the team's fixes!
That's only going over the glitches part. There's also making the code more efficient. Before testing, there is typically slowdown in areas of the game where there shouldn't be slowdown (specifically, areas of the game that work properly normally, but don't when you do certain things). Why? Inefficient code, mainly. When discovered, they go back and rework the code in an attempt to fix the problem. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes not. But they still do it, which takes time.
Testing is given a ton of time for a reason; you need every single minute of that time to make the deadline. It is an incredibly difficult task. We're talking about millions of lines of code here. Not something you can do in a week.
My point is, testing does, in fact, take up pretty much all of the time allotted to it. And whatever is left (if there is any) is usually too little to go back and attempt to do something like remove an entire feature. It would just take too long to remove, given that games these days have tougher and tougher deadlines to meet.[/QUOTE]
And FINALLY, all of these posts were validated by input from a QA employee (game tester) from Electronic Arts:
[quote name='Trenthian']as a game tester, I am priv to a lot of details about games that the common gamer is not.
Simply cutting all the code and assets assigned to the minigames could have caused so many problems with the game that its 1000 times easier just to make it inaccessable
EA does it all the time. If you think for a moment the levels that never made it into Medal of honor european assault arent still on the disc, you'd be mistaken. the code is still there, even if those levels are incomplete. Just removing them would have delayed the game for testing another 2 months.
so yea, I would also like to say that the ESRB is not going to change the rating. Because rockstar followed the nessecaryh and laid forth guidelines to correct a matter of taste. [/QUOTE]
In summary, Rockstar is not guilty of any kind of deception. They made use of a common practice within a VERY stressful industry. In game development, time is your biggest enemy and every shortcut you can take is ESSENTIAL.
Unless you go in and MODIFY the game's code, Hot Coffee is INACCESSIBLE. There is no cheat code or easter egg. You cannot access the mini-game in question without modifying the game itself. And once you do that, Rockstar is no longer responsible for its content.
Case closed.
(Also see: Team Ninja and the DOA nude skins issue.)
. Why doesn't anyone make them here? I guess it's because there wouldn't be much profit in it. Game makers are free to make whatever they want though...
ing stupid. Just because you have the right to free speech, doesn't mean I can't turn around and call you a 
