This has made my day. Rockstar, the publisher and developer of the GTA series, among other not-very-notable titles, has been given the award of "worst P.R. blunder" for the hot coffee scandal which rocked the western world and partly led to the passing of anti-videogame legislation in the USA earlier in the year. In brief, the situation involved unlockable digital content of an explicit sexual nature which had been "accidentally" left in the code of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and when the code was cracked and the coffee spilled, they denied it, pointed fingers and generally acted like children.
From the list, compiled by Fineman PR:
As if best selling video game "Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas" didn't have enough violence and debauchery already, its maker Rockstar Games added hidden animated sex scenes. The soft-core porn ignited a political firestorm forcing a new "adults-only" rating reported the Wall Street Journal. Other coverage said Best Buy and Circuit City pulled the game from their stores.
From gamepolitics:
As for Rockstar, including the Hot Coffee sex animations alone might not have propelled them on to the list. Repeatedly lying about how the steamy content got onto game discs, however, sealed their place in the Pantheon of PR disasters.
Michael Fineman, creator of the list, explained that corporate mistakes are unavoidable. How they are managed is often the difference between a mere problem and a full-on P.R. disaster.
"A lot of these blunders oftentimes are not about honest mistakes that people make. Oftentimes the difference lies in the response that the organizations make to the original blunder. And oftentimes that response if filled with arrogance and so forth - and that's really where they make their biggest mistake...
Indeed, it's not the content or that it was left on the disc; they got their place on the list because of how they reacted. Sure, the Rockstar brand became a household name (and that result should put them on a "Top P.R.Successes" list, but it's now associated with corrupting children - the very audience it wasn't supposed to target in the first place.
Oh the issues, issues.
