The Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas‘ Hot Coffee class action lawsuit has been dismissed by the court.
The huge Hot Coffee San Andreas scandal broke out around July of 2005 after a sexual mini-game was found hidden on the game disc. It was made worse when Take Two originally denied it, thus lying about it. San Andreas was eventually recalled and given the elusive AO “Adults Only” rating before being re-issued by Take Two with the sexual code on the game disc removed (thus retaining its M-Rating).
You may recall that in November of last year, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted preliminary approval of a settlement of several class action suits against Take-Two. Take Two expected then to pay out up to $2.75 million for the settlement, pending Court approval.
Turns out that few actually filed claims. On July 31, the Court said that “the plaintiffs could no longer meet their burden of showing that the case could proceed on the proposed class basis” according to an SEC filing.
So now Take Two won’t be forced to write a check as big as everyone thought since they won’t have to settle the class action lawsuit filed over “Hot Coffee” claims. The court issued an opinion on the matter refusing to certify the proposed settlement class. Which means that the publisher of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas may not have to pay out a proposed $1.025 million in settlement benefits. Why not? It’s possible that there was no actual representative class. Which means, too few people were offended, or could agree to be offended in the same way, for the Court to see the class as worthy of getting paid over a million dollars.
Via Kotaku