Top 10 Technology Disasters include Hot Coffee

An unapproved mod for a video game has made the list of the 10 greatest technology disasters, included on the same list with Apollo 13 and the Pepsi riots in the Philippines.

A new Digital Trends article entitled "Epic Fail: The Top 10 Most Terrifying Technology Disasters" plodded through tech history looking for the most horrific technology issues to embarrass or haunt its makers. Rolling in on the very first page was the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. According to the article:

Gamers find hidden surprises and Easter eggs (usually quirky in-jokes and references to past titles) in favorite video games all the time. But when clever hackers discovered a full-blown sex simulation known as “the hot coffee mod” built into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, already-controversial publisher Rockstar Games suddenly found itself in really, really hot water. Boxes were pulled from shelves, industry ratings board the ESRB gave the game a sales kiss of death by stamping an Adults-Only rating on it, and parent company Take-Two Interactive ended up on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit alleging consumer fraud. Politicians like Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton even piled on, trying to introduce new video game legislation in the wake of the event to bolster their family-friendly images. Bottom line: Next time, it’s best to go with decaf.

While the mod may have been a nightmare for Rockstar, the game has sold more than 21 million copies, according to the company, more than 1/3 of that coming after the Hot Coffee mod was revealed in June of 2005. A class action suit settlement was rejected by The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2008.

I guess this writer has a problem with the headline of the article, which defines the entries as terrifying tech disasters. The Apollo 13 tragedy and the riots that claimed the lives of two people in the Philippines over a Pepsi promotion were truly terrifying for the people that lived through it. Everything else on the list is merely embarrassing and costly, even if somewhat amusing.