[robin_reala]

Hot Coffee was in GTA: San Andreas, a game that a “Mature” rating in the US i.e. only for people of ages 17+. They cut Hot Coffee to get to Mature from Adults Only (18+). Kids shouldn’t have been anywhere near these games if parents cared about what they were looking at.

[Jerrrry]

Getting GTA San Andreas from the pawn shop was the happiest moment in my pre-pubescent life, and it had nothing to do with the mature aspects of it.

[Chabsff]

At the risk of repeating myself. The issue with Hot Coffee was that it cast a huge shadow on the ESRB system itself.

[RGamma]

German GTA: SA (and VC) was even more cut. No dismemberment, no blood, no money from corpses.

Austria imports...

[nxobject]

I get the gore, but _no money from corpses_? Are depictions of pickpocketing illegal?

(I'm being hyperbolic here, but, it's still curious.)

[RGamma]

There's much more detailed info what was disallowed in Vice City here (German): https://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=3867

My memory is fuzzy but I think you couldn't be rewarded for killing people according to the BzKJ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Department_for_Media_H....

You'll note that the existence of a site dedicated to censorship in video games means this was a big thing in Germany. No longer the case as much.

Manhunt for example was forbidden to be advertised in any way (put on the "Index"), but you could sell it under the counter. Some depictions triggered rules that meant games (or videos, music) could not even present to their corresponding regulatory body, which is USK for games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterhaltungssoftware_Selbstko...) to be rated 18+.

I used to know much more about this topic, but it's 15 years in the past now... Needless to say there were a million ways to circumvent this including specialised shops, uncut patches and more.

Some more: For a brief time ragdolls in Counter Strike: Source were disallowed (defeated enemies lay down instead), blood could not be red in Halo (alien blood was okay), gibs were disabled in TF2 (corpses exploded into toys).

Germany had problems with gore whereas the US had problems with sexuality (Hot Coffee mode removal).