EOC,Week 3

84-year-old grandmother, Florence Cohen, saw a commercial for the video game "Grand Theft Auto, San Andres." The game depicts very violent and criminal acts including murder, and of course theft. The grandmother went to the store to purchase the game for her 14-year-old grandson. While watching her grandson play the game she saw that there was more sexual explicit content that was not described in the commercial or within the description of the game. She contacted her lawyer and filed a class action lawsuit against the makers of “Rock Star Gaming” for false and misleading practices. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the licensing owners of the game. The grandmother won and was awarded her money back or a newer version of the game that didn’t contain the sexual content.
The grandmother had every right to sue the gaming company. The company was responsible for selling the game under false pretenses. Even thought the game contained murder and criminal activity, things Florence knew about. The company is still responsible for selling the game with the hidden content. The company claims that the content was not supposed to be available on the game it was removed from the game. A code was made available to the consumer to unlock this content. The company claims that someone had to type in the code in order to unlock this content (who unlocked the content in this case is still unknown.) Whether there was a code or not the company is still responsible for selling the game under the false pretenses. “The term false pretenses describes a broad category of crimes that involve activities intended to deceive others by making false claims.” (Essentials of Business Laws, Liuzzo, page 24). In my opinion I think that the grandmother was essentially responsible for purchasing the game. She was aware that the game depicted violent and criminal acts and she still felt this was okay. I don’t quite understand her justifying violence and crime, but not sexual content. I understand that she was upset that she was not aware of the sexual content. If she knew there was some of this content would it have stopped her from buying the game? What in the first place was her mind thought when she purchased the violent game for her impressionable 14-year-old grandson?