Sex games

The Hot Coffee minigame controversy concerns a normally inaccessible minigame in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, developed by Rockstar North. Public awareness of the existence of the minigame arrived with the release of the Hot Coffee mod, created for one version of the product (the 2005 release for Windows-based computers). This mod enables access to the minigame.

The minigame portrays simulated sexual intercourse between the main character and any of the main character's girlfriends. The objective for the player is to try to improve the relationship between the two. The name of the mod is derived from the girlfriends' offer for the main character to come into their homes for "coffee" — a euphemism for sex.

Although the "Hot Coffee" minigame was completely disabled and its existence was only highlighted after the mod's release for the PC version in June 9, 2005, the assets for the minigame were also discovered in both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of the game, and people found ways to enable the minigame via console video game hacking tools. By the middle of July 2005, the minigame's discovery attracted considerable controversy from lawmakers and politicians, prompting the game to be re-rated as an adult game, and pulled from some shelves. An updated version of San Andreas has since been released with the minigame removed completely, allowing the game to regain its original rating. A patch for the original version of the game, which disables the minigame and crashes the game if one attempts to access it, has also been released.

Adult video games are video games which have significant sexual content (like adult movies), and are therefore intended for an adult audience. Adult games can fall into many genres and have diverse gameplay.

In console gaming, the genre can be seen as early as the Atari 2600, such as Custer's Revenge. In PCs, the genre can be first seen in adult text adventures, and later with graphical adventures, including one of the most recognized and mainstream adult adventure game series, Leisure Suit Larry. Arcade games have received few adult entries in North America.

With CD-ROM and multimedia based games in the 1990s, most adult games featured video clips with limited interactivity. Both pre-rendered and realtime 3D graphics were also used. While most games could be considered nothing more than pornography, some attempted to include actual story and plot. This can be seen in some games with less explicit content, equal to an R or PG-13 rated movie.

Modern console publishers often have policies against depictions of nudity and explicit sexuality, particularly Sony with its PlayStation brand of consoles. Some titles featuring nudity, such as BMX XXX and Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude for the PlayStation 2 were censored, while versions on the Xbox and GameCube were not. However Sony allowed nudity in the title God of War which, ironically, was also developed by Sony.

A new generation of adult social games has emerged that bring multiple users together in sexual environments. Examples include Red Light Center, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life and Playboy: The Mansion.

Adult games may take the form of bootlegs, circumventing mainstream publishers who may have policies against such games. Patches or hacks to mainstream non-adult games may add sexual and pornographic themes, mostly for humor, especially when sexuality was never intended in the original game. Examples include the Tomb Raider computer games, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee mod and ROM hacks for console emulators.

The Internet has allowed adult games to receive wider availability and recognition, including amateur games in Flash or Java.

Games that use nudity and partial nudity while not being considered adult games include Fear Effect, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, God of War and others that maintain content consistent with M or T ratings by the ESRB. Nudity may be removed in localized versions, such as the Japanese version of God of War. Nudity may be removed for specific systems, such as Sony consoles which have an anti-nudity policy.