The latest patch for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us removes a working phone sex hotline number from in-game posters, the developer confirms. An artist accidentally included the phone number on an ad for pest control that can be seen plastered around the game’s dystopian environments. Players called the phone number and reached a working sex line shortly after the PlayStation 3-exclusive game’s launch in June 2013.
“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,” The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann tells Kotaku. “But I guess that doesn’t work when you have a 1-800 in front of it.”
The update brings the game up to version 1.02. It also fixes several multiplayer issues related to host migration, connectivity, and crashes, and tweaks other gameplay and playlist settings, in addition to removing the offending phone numbers.