By now almost all of you have read about the so-called "Hot Coffee" modification to Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The mod, created by Patrick Wildenborg of the Netherlands, enables players to take part in graphic sexual scenes. Politicians have had a field day blaming the GTA franchise for society's problems, and this latest development has once again put the game and Rockstar in the middle of the crosshairs.

The National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF) has already issued one statement on the situation and today they announced the support of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) to once again warn parents about the hidden sexual content. Clinton has requested that the Federal Trade Commission look into the matter "to determine the source of the pornographic content and to conduct an examination of the adequacy of retailer enforcement policies."

"America's parents and retailers need to know immediately if the code and pornographic animation are on the disk -- hidden, locked or otherwise. We don't want technical runarounds," said NIMF founder and president Dr. David Walsh. "In plain English, America wants to know 'is the code on the disk?'"

And that's really the fundamental question. Is all the code for the sexual content already implemented in the game's source code as Wildenborg insists, or did the modder create these new scenes? GameDAILY BIZ spoke (under a condition of anonymity) with someone very well connected to the developer community about this very question. For this story, we'll simply refer to him as "Jake."

While "it's definitely, theoretically possible," said Jake, that a modder could have created all-new content for San Andreas, the fact that new codes for the cheat device Action Replay make it possible to play the "Hot Coffee" scenario in the PlayStation 2 version of the game makes it highly likely that all the code is already present on the game disc as shipped.

"It's simply not possible that an Action Replay code could have all that animation data or control... this code is literally a few numbers, which is not enough to [create that content] from scratch," Jake explained. "The code doesn't even change any of the files on the disc; all that does is after the game is loaded into memory it's changing memory locations—it's changing the contents of code which is in the PS2's memory at that point."

He continued, "Up until this Action Replay thing surfaced, it wasn't playable unless you either had the PC version or you modded your Xbox, but it looks like this PS2 version allows you to do it just if you have a normal PS2, an Action Replay and a copy of GTA: SA. That's definitely a bigger smoking gun for me."

But does this mean that Rockstar is lying? Not necessarily. It's a matter of semantics. Although this website and others have said that Rockstar denied the content, the company never used those words specifically. Their latest statement is perhaps deliberately vague and is certainly open to interpretation. Rockstar said that the "scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications to the game's source code," but that also depends on what "significant" means. "The game's source code has been changed, even in the Action Replay version of the code to enable that," says Jake. "So Rockstar's statement is not technically wrong."

If the ESRB or the FTC eventually finds that the Hot Coffee code is indeed already included in the original source code, Rockstar could be forced to recall the game, which would no doubt have a serious financial impact on them and parent company Take-Two Interactive.

"In my opinion, they may have to recall the game. And if you consider financially what that does to them, that's a pretty big deal... I wasn't sure that they'd have to recall the game when there wasn't an Action Replay cheat but now that the cheat exists [for the PS2] I think they will have to recall," Jake said. "Then they would have to re-release it, repress the game, with those sections removed [in order to keep the 'M' rating], which would pose a substantial financial problem for them I would think."

"If the code is on the disk, we call upon Rockstar to issue a general recall, with a full refund, of all units of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas so they can be properly labeled Adults Only (AO)," said Walsh. "On the other hand, if the 'Hot Coffee' sequences have been created, independent of any Rockstar's actions, then parents everywhere need to be alerted. If interactive pornography can be so easily inserted into this video game, it can be inserted into any game."

When contacted for comment today, a Rockstar rep said that the company could not elaborate beyond what was already written in the previous statement. They did, however, issue a new statement in support of the ESRB and game ratings, which you can read here.

GameDAILY BIZ will keep you posted on the latest "Hot Coffee" developments.