Gamertell

Starbucks’ prices look positively reasonable when you consider how much a little “Hot Coffee” cost Take-Two Interactive.

The Grand Theft Auto publisher announced on September 1, 2009, that it has reached a $20 million settlement with investors in the class-action lawsuit filed concerning the Hot Coffee scandal surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The suit alleges that Take-Two was cash strapped before releasing the highly anticipated GTA sequel and rushed the game out the door knowing about the extreme sexual content. Take-Two didn’t help its case when it claimed the hidden sex scene was the work of hackers, when it was designers at GTA developer Rockstar Games who left the content “in” the game. The thing turned into a PR and financial nightmare for Take-Two pretty quickly, leading to a GTA: San Andreas recall and a nosedive in the company’s stock price.

The company’s unsure footing in the post-Hot Coffee era led Electronic Arts to make overtures to Take-Two stockholders. Take-Two’s leadership rebuffed that offer but said they were open to other merger offers. At that time, Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick categorized the EA offer as opportunistic.

News about the settlement also came with the announcement of a quarterly loss of $55.5 million for the period ending July 31, 2009. There was no GTA on the Big Three consoles to pad the company’s bottom line this year and its Nintendo DS release, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, underachieved. Also, Take-Two’s biggest 2009 release, Bioshock 2, got delayed until 2010. But whenever that game does come out, it should definitely improve Take-Two’s numbers.

Read [Venure Beat]  Also Read [Kotaku] Also Read [Gamertell]