Hot Coffee
These days, video games rarely get recalled. So many purchases are just digital copies, and it’s usually more effective for anything wrong with the game to be fixed via an update or patch, even for the holdouts still buying physical copies.
Way back in 2005, pushing out an update wasn’t an option for most games, including Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which got publisher Rockstar in hot water for the infamous “Hot Coffee” mod. The mod reactivated the ability for players to play a minigame that depicted goofy sex scenes when one of the player’s girlfriends invited them up to their apartment “for coffee.”
Before the game was finished, the devs decided not to include Hot Coffee. However, since the work on the minigame was already completed and elements of the programming for those scenes were used elsewhere, removing it entirely would require considerable work. So they simply changed one variable and locked the content off.
And that would’ve been it if it weren’t for a mod that re-enabled the content, prompting a change in rating from M for Mature to AO for Adults Only. Rockstar argued that the mod added content they hadn’t made. That lie just made it when hacking the PS2 and Xbox editions made it clear Hot Coffee was originally part of all versions that shipped. The result was a huge blow to the business since, at the time, most retailers refused to sell AO-rated games in the US. Most of them pulled the existing copies from shelves, and a new version had to be submitted for ESRB approval before new ones could be shipped.