NEW YORK - Video-game publisher Take-Two Interactive announced Friday that it plans to settle a class-action lawsuit surrounding the Hot Coffee download, which made it possible to access sexually explicit material in the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The settlement, which awaits court approval, would dismiss all claims against Take-Two without admission of liability or wrongdoing on the part of the company or Rockstar Games, the developer of the game.
Each
party to the lawsuit will be entitled to a cash payment of up to $35 or a free copy
of the game without the offending code.
New York-based Take-Two has said it is committed to spending at least $1
million on settlement benefits and anticipates spending no more than $2.75
million on the settlement.
"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," said Take-Two CEO Ben Feder. "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."
