No Man's Sky is under investigation for misleading advertising
An advertising regulator in the UK is looking into the veracity of the game's promotional materials.
The UK-based Advertising Standards Agency is investigating developer Hello Games and No Man's Sky based on one player's formal complaint concerning discrepancies between the game's marketing materials and final product (via PC Gamer).
Reddit user AzzerUK filed his complaint after taking stock of promotional materials such as information on No Man's Sky's Steam page, trailers, and screenshots, and contrasting them with how the game turned out. That's when he enlisted help from the ASA, an entity that exists to investigate UK consumers' complaints related to advertisements, promotions, and marketing.
"I can't speak about other countries, but in the UK [there] are regulations about providing advertising material that could mislead a consumer in some way—[for example] displaying things that do not, in fact, exist,” the user wrote. “The ASA say they have received a number of complaints, and so the points below are not necessarily all related to things I personally took issue with, but are the issues they have picked out at the most clear-cut problems from amongst all complaints."
The ASA responded with alacrity. Representatives contacted both Hello Games and Valve, and asked them to explain issues such as UI design, combat, the behavior of certain units such as ships and sentinels, aiming systems, the size of creatures, and the speed of loading times and galaxy warp—just some of the issues with which AzzerUK took umbrage.
"We will ensure the advertisers are made aware of any points relating to other marketing material under their control (such as the Hello Games YouTube channel and website)," the ASA wrote back to AzzerUK. "The outcomes of ASA investigations are cross-applicable to other marketing making the same claims, so any decision reached in relation to the Steam page would apply to other advertising for No Man’s Sky where the same (or materially similar) claims appear."
You can view the full list of issues on AzzerUK's Reddit post.
Although the ASA lacks the power to enforce legislation, it does have the authority to compel companies to remove advertisements if they violate the organization's code of advertising practice. In other words, should the ASA find that AzzerUK's complaint has merit, it could force Valve and Hello Games to respond to its inquiries and pull misleading materials. If they don't, the ASA would have the power to force sanctions.
ASA's investigation is ongoing.
In an interview with Eurogamer, AzzerUK explained that he's more disappointed than rabid with anger over how No Man's Sky turned out, and that he filed his complaint in an effort to get more game developers to market their games honestly.
"I figured that if we want Steam store pages for games to start falling in-line and stop misleading consumers, then it would take consumers to point these problems out to the ASA, rather than all sit around on Reddit complaining to each other but assuming that it'll all get sorted by itself eventually."
Dissatisfaction with No Man's Sky continues to mount. At this year's Tokyo Game Show, Sony president Shuhei Yoshida said that although he enjoyed the game, "I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one. It wasn't a great PR strategy, because he didn't have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer. But he says their plan is to continue to develop No Man's Sky features and such, and I'm looking forward to continuing to play the game.
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David Craddock posted a new article, No Man's Sky is under investigation for misleading advertising
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It's not an issue in previews and promotionals on YouTube and their own site, but on store pages like on Steam where they were promoting it on there so someone will buy the game, that's not right. If they had removed it from the store page a few months before release, it wouldn't be an issue, but it was left up there leading up to and after the game came out.
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Talking about features is fine as long as there is no implicit promise or create a set of expectations. Once you start showing off features in promotional trailers or start refering to those features you need to deliver on it. If there a disclaimer either in the footage or the interview itself this wouldn't be an issue.
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The only thing I agree with about this is the Steam page still features the 2? year old E3 trailer that is representative of gameplay but not graphics of the final build. They're pretty stupid for leaving that up.
Aside from that, it's 2016. Watch a video to see exactly the game you're gonna get, shit's not hard. Trust marketing at your own peril. -
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I am not sure I agree with this, not because NMS doesn't deserve some reprimands for their bad messaging, but because I worry the precedent that this sets for indie developers. This was never something that hurts majors since they always have lawyers and PR to keep stay in line enough to never quite promise anything or worry about it. For Hello Games, they might be lucky and get Sony to help out, but otherwise they are in a tough spot.
If anyone thinks someone could sue UBI or EA for this and win for something similar they are crazy. The litigation would either never go forward, or it would simply settle quietly (settling means nothing changes). So unless it is class action territory there is probably no chance of it being a big deal.
So yeah, if this goes forward, and Hello Games gets hurt badly by this (like they aren't being hurt badly enough already by their reputation), then it means indie devs are gonna have to basically never reveal anything about their game or risk the same. -
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All steps except becoming an informed consumer, lol. Couldn't be bothered to watch a video or stream of the game to find out if maybe the company invested in selling a product to you might be overselling said product?
Obviously the NMS devs made a lot of missteps in their communication, some of it is pretty bad (the Steam page trailer, for one). But this whole thing seems like a "strike while the iron is hot" situation rather than some kind of "consumer rights" advocacy. NMS hate is one of the most popular things on the internet right now it seems.
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