Earlier this week we reported that Naughty Dog had received a complaint from a cartographer regarding a subway map which had been used in The Last of Us without permission. That was a red-face situation for the developer, but since then another even more embarrassing cock-up has been unearthed.
The game features a poster which reads "Pest Control" and features two phone numbers - both of which link through to real-world sex lines when dialled from a real-world telephone. Oops!
Speaking to Kotaku, the game's creative director Neil Druckmann explained why it happened:
That 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. But I guess that doesn't work when you have a 1-800 in front of it.
We're now working to take it out. It was just an honest mistake.
Oh dear. Hopefully next week will be free of such PR disasters.
[source kotaku.com]
Comments 15
Well, i'm not too interested in the game, but hey....what I can do is appreciate the intrinsic links between pest control and phone sex..
P.S. liked the 'cock-up' insertion, that was quite subtle
Is Naughty Dog going to reimburse me for my $700 phone bill!?
;____;
Weirdly, I never think of calling the phone numbers I might see in video games, except in the Silent Hill Shattered Memories on the Wii, where you could dial them in game as part of the gameplay, that was a pretty neat feature.
A liitle embarrassng, maybe, but this is nothing compared to taking copyrighted work. For a company that pays close attention to detail these mistakes have no business happening though, it's not like Sony was cracking the whip, hell they delayed it so idiotic stuff like this shouldn't have happened. To be fair, other games have had more serious stuff involving sex right in them. For this to even be an issue you have to go and actually call these numbers. If somebody is doing that, wow...
ITs look like Naughty Dog is getting Puts on Sunglasses Naughty
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some idiot actually called the numbers? I'm gonna belive them when they say this was an honest mistake. The fact that this was actually found amazes me.
I love how the tag is 'sex'
lol. That's hysterical. Amazing the things that can happen when the graphics are good enough that you can actually read the details of textures.
Jeez. What utter nonsense! It's a freaking videogame!
What I find funny is that two random numbers turned out to be sex lines. What are the odds? How many sex lines are there in the US?
Pest Control = Sex Line.
I am confused how they is related
A patch to fix it and a few Multiplayer tweeks out later today.
http://www.naughtydog.com/site/post/the_last_of_us_patch_102/
I've yet to try the multiplayer, heard it's pretty good though.
Who cares
@Gamer83 - It's not bad but I didn't think it was anything special. I was expecting a little more with the way ND was being so hush hush about it. I would have liked for it too have some kinda of Co-op like Uncharted. With you and others taking on waves of infected instead of just vs. The infected aren't even in the multiplayer at all. Which I found surprising.
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