Hot Coffee is one of the most infamous Grand Theft Auto Mods ever created, in part because it allowed players to access scandalous content originally deleted from Grand Theft Auto: San Andres. The content in question was one of the first instances where players could engage in sexual intercourse in a video game, something that has, in the years following 2005, become far more commonplace.

Hot Coffee features CJ, the playable is asked up to his girlfriend’s room – you can have one of six girlfriends – for some “Hot Coffee.” From there, you can engage in a sex mini-game in order to ensure a successful time over, pleasuring your woman as you see fit. The content was originally included in the game and assets from this scene were recycled in other points of the game.

The existence of this Hot Coffee scene remained unknown until a mod for the Windows version of Grand Thief Auto: San Andres emerged to allow you to access this scene. At first, this looked like a mod created by fans for the PC version of the game – until players realized that all the modders did was just reactivate these hidden scenes and that the hidden mini-game was also available on the PS2 and Xbox versions of the game.

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company to Rockstar, experienced some pretty explosive controversy following the revelation that this mod existed. Concerned parents, apparently fine with giving their children a game where you extort and murder, were horrified that the game demonstrated consensual sex between adults.

The Then-United States Senator Hilary Clinton argued that video games would require a more intense evaluation from the ESRB. Investigations went underway to see if Rockstar and Take-Two had actually undermined the ESRB’s rating system in order to sneak this lewd content into their otherwise fine game.

Worse still, this started a whole discussion on the morality of video games. GTA: San Andres wasn’t the only game that drew the public’s attention, but also fellow Rockstar game Bully, as well as The Sims 2 and Killer 7. Protest groups started opposing video game companies – especially Take-Two – for corrupting the youth.

The end result was that GTA: San Andres was re-rated from M to AO. This might not sound so drastic, but game stores and markets typically do not stock AO games. On top of that, countries like Australia confiscated the game from stores and declared it illegal to distribute the game in any manner. This meant that, if Rockstar wanted to move more copies of GTA: San Andres, changes had to be made and fast.

The controversial material was reworked and removed from new versions of the game. The new version had to be resubmitted to the ESRB, who declared that it earned the M rating originally given to San Andres. Of course, modders quickly figured out ways to re-insert the Hot Coffee scene into the new, updated version of the game.

On the government side, the new Family Entertainment Protection Act was pushed, which compelled the ESRB to protect children from material deemed immoral and inappropriate. Specifically, if stores sold content to children that was deemed mature, they could be fined thousands of dollars per infraction. For smaller gaming outlets, this could be a kiss of death. The act was never pushed into law, though several states were inspired by this Act to enact their own, state-level laws restricting the sale of violent and inappropriate games.

The controversy happened to occur at the same time the United States Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating Take-Two’s top-tier people for insider trading, resulting in a very drastic upheaval of management from the company.

So what is the ultimate fall-out of the Hot Coffee Mod? Well, aside from several imitation mods, very little. Rockstar would later get into hot-water with the rating system for Manhunt 2, though that controversy had less to do with sex and more to do with good-old-fashioned violence.

Stranger still, GTA: San Andres wasn’t the only PS2-era game to have a sex mini-game. God of War drew a lot of fire for its sex mini-games and plentiful nudity, but its mini-games managed to avoid gaining the same notoriety as Hot Coffee. It’s uncertain why.

Nowadays, sex in gaming is far more wide-spread. It seems odd returning to Hot Coffee, only to see how otherwise tame the whole sex scene is. Considering there are games out there that allow you to sexually assault women, it seems strange that an almost wholesome scene of consensual sex drove politicians to the point where they’d fine smaller gaming outlets for distributing to their biggest audience: teens and college kids too stoned to remember bringing their license to the store.