I must have missed this when it first came about in November. Us Dwarves can be slow like that... but at GamePolitics.com yesterday, there was a little article called "Fine Print: Lawyers Get $1M, you get (up to) 35 bucks in Hot Coffee Deal."

$35 is a lot of coffee, and I'd much rather be drinking Starbucks Mucho Frou-Frou beans than the generic ground cardboard that I can actually afford, so my attention was immediately focused on the piece.

Now, I don't even care about the actual "news" about the $1M the lawyers are getting – I mean, who is surprised that in any lawsuit, the only winners are the legal teams for either side? Feh. I decided to ignore that part and read on about the important bit: how I get my $35 worth of hot coffee.

Here are links to the Joystiq article on the subject, as well as a nice little piece by Gaming Steve, in case you missed them in the GamPolitics blurb.

The thing that really, really gets me here is that they actually agreed to this, to end one of the dumbest lawsuits ever. In their official spiel, they note that they just didn't feel like dragging this out in the courts. You know the lawyers are more than happy to have taken it to the bitter end, to the tune of who knows how many million dollars. I bet they are really disappointed.

You have to go out of your way to access the "Hot Coffee" minigame, which was never finished (obviously because it would change the game's rating). The developer foolishly left the code in the release version, but it was not accessible through normal gameplay. You need to actually violate the EULA and modify a game file to allow the main character to engage in "naughty acts" with his girlfriends.

In a game where violence and cruelty to your fellow human beings is rewarded handsomely, sex seems pretty tame. The thing is... none of the six available sex scenes involve any nudity, and the textures and animations are all messed up too.

I don't know about you, but I find there is much more titillating action on any cable T.V. lineup, often on major channels during prime time.

Even later, with third-party mods, while the characters appear "nude", they are as anatomically correct as Barbie and Ken. ~yyyaaaaaawwwwnnnn~

When this all went mainstream, there was a veritable mud-fest while accusations, denials, finger-pointing and blame went in all directions. I know you are dying to read about the whole thing, so let's go visit our mutual friend, Wikipedia.

This all falls under the "what the hell is wrong with you people" category.

I feel like I need to go wash my hands now.

And no, I won't be trying to claim $35. That would mean that we actually KEPT the receipt for the game. Yeah, right.

;-)#