Earlier this week, news broke that Russian hackers altered the code of "Manhunt 2" on PSP, which removed special effects that obscured the game's most brutal kills.
Today, on an afternoon conference call with reporters, ESRB president Patricia Vance announced that the video game will not be re-rated back to its original Adults Only status despite the hack. Stephen Totilo was on the call, and asked if the ESRB was aware that the content was still on the disc, accessible by hackers:
"We make assumptions that those modifications that are being made are secure, that companies have taken reasonable measures to secure that those modifications can't be reverted and we made that assumption in this case. No matter what measures you take it seems that hackers will find ways to get into content and modify it. We're not security police here. We're here to inform consumers about content. We put the responsibility on publishers to create code, and program the games so that they operate effectively and to make sure the consumers are informed about the games they are playing. In this particular case you're dealing with unauthorized software that's being release, unauthorized uses of that software. Certainly I don't think the ESRB should be held responsible and I don't know to what extent you can hold the publisher responsible. These are acts of third parties and are unauthorized."
Read Totilo's entire story on MTV News.com.