After the Hot Coffee fiasco, everyone is understandably gun-shy about making sure the ESRB is aware of all the potentially controversial or "mature" content in their games. So when a few enterprising fans took a look inside the Vista version of Halo 2 and found an error that featured the picture of what is assumed to be a Bungie team-member's naked backside, Microsoft went into action. The date for the game is now shown as June 31, and new ESRB signifiers are being added to copies of the game that are waiting to ship to retail. The ESRB has sent us this comment:

After the M (Mature 17+) rating assignment was issued for Halo 2 for

Vista and just prior to the shipment of the game to retail, Microsoft

notified ESRB about pertinent content found in a map editor tool that

is being bundled with the game. The content in question, although

likely to be inaccessible to the vast majority of users, displays a

photograph of an individual showing his bare backside to the user when

a particular error occurs, and thus warrants a ‘Partial Nudity’ content

descriptor in order to alert consumers to its presence in the product.

Microsoft has therefore applied stickers with correct ESRB rating

information to the packaging of virtually all copies that will ship to

retail in the U.S. and Canada. We have been advised by Microsoft that

future runs of the game will be produced without the content in

question, thus negating the need for the descriptor to be displayed on

those versions.

This looks like a harmless prank that only a very few people would have ever found, but these days you can't be too careful. When releasing violent games is enough to move companies to include warnings to investors about potential political fallout, the idea of a bared behind is almost nuclear in power.

I, for one, would be terrified if for some reason I saw a bottom while I thought I was simply sitting down to beat my friends to death with the "butt" of my shotgun. I'm glad everyone was able to leap into action and fix this calamity.