Phone sex hotlines and 'pirated' maps in The Last of Us

Hot on the heels of the Ellen Page controversy, video game developer Naughty Dog found itself rocked by two more scandals revolving around their blockbuster PS3 exclusive, The Last of Us. The latter of the two, which involves sex hotline numbers accidentally placed within the game, has recently been addressed thanks to the title’s very first patch, according to Naughty Dog’s website.

 

 

Phone sex in The Last of Us – no more lonely nights for clickers?

 

Astute-eyed gamers noticed “Pest Control” posters, complete with phone numbers, plastered on bulletin boards inside the game. Though some saw it as just another sample of the many textures used to inject realism into The Last of Us’ virtual world, others tried calling the numbers expecting to be greeted by some kind of Easter egg cooked up by Naughty Dog. Instead they found themselves reaching the “hottest sex line in America”, according to Kotaku.

 

Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us’ creative director, explained that the inclusion of these real-life phone sex numbers “was an artist’s mistake”.

 

“What happened was, they put some phone numbers in the game and then they thought they could just change the area code to 555, then it’s invalid because it’s what they do in movies,” Druckmann explained. “But I guess that doesn’t work when you have a 1-800 in front of it.”

 

Patch 1.02, deployed on Friday, June 28, modifies the “texture of a phone number on a bulletin board”. While this is the only alteration to the single-player campaign, the patch fixes several technical issues that bogged the multiplayer mode, such as connectivity problems and random crashes.

 

Copy-pasted map draws ire of Boston-based cartographer

 

Prior to the sex hotline numbers debacle, US-based cartographer Cameron Booth was livid to find his copyrighted map of Boston’s subway system copy-and-pasted, without his consent, onto one of the game’s textures.

 

The map maker was quick to express his fury in his personal blog. “For a software developer –especially a big developer working on a blockbuster title like this – to casually appropriate someone else’s work and incorporate it into their game without any discussion with the owner of that work is completely unacceptable,” he wrote. “Not to mention hugely ironic, as the software industry is always complaining about piracy of their work.”

 

Booth was, however, reluctant to sue, according to Eurogamer. “I really, really want to resolve this without resorting to legal methods,” he said. “To be clear, I’m not after any huge punitive damages: I’d be satisfied with a public acknowledgement of the error from Naughty Dog to build awareness of this type of copyright infringement, and a fee that’s agreeable to both sides that could act as a retrospective license fee.”

 

Booth claimed he wanted to spread information about copyright infringement. “Education about copyright infringement is important stuff. And it works both ways: companies like Naughty Dog are worried about software piracy, designers like me are worried about ethical and fair usage of our work.”

 

As for the game itself, Booth only had positive comments. “From what I’ve seen, it looks great. It just uses my work without permission,” he said in a tweet.

 

Naughty Dog has already admitted their mistake and apologized to Booth. His fiery blog entry has also been removed. “I can say that they do acknowledge their error in using my map and were very apologetic for it,” said Booth in a new note. Details of his compensation have yet to be revealed.

 

No stopping the Naughty Dog train

 

Despite being embroiled in three separate controversies not even a month into its release, The Last of Us continues to meet widespread acclaim. The game has even found its way to the number one spot in the Japanese charts, selling 117,465 copies in its opening week and beating out Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D and Tomodachi Collection: New Life, which sold 42,247 and 34,286 respectively between June 17 and 23. This is a spectacular feat for a Western-made title, especially because the Japanese video game industry is always dominated by Japanese-developed games. — TJD, GMA News