Back in September, we informed you about Advertising Standards Authority’s investigation regarding No Man’s Sky false advertising on Steam. Well, today Eurogamer revealed that the ASA ruled No Man’s Sky did not deceive or mislead its customers.
According to the complaints, the Steam store page features screenshots misrepresenting the graphical quality of the game, as well as videos depicting advanced animal behaviour, large-scale combat and ship-flying behaviour that were not in the final game.
The ASA claimed that, and based upon Hello Games’ assertion, No Man’s Sky is a procedurally generated game, meaning that players experience varies from playthrough to playthrough. As such, these screenshots and videos do not misrepresent the game given its procedurally generated nature.
“The summary description of the game made clear that it was procedurally generated, that the game universe was essentially infinite, and that the core premise was exploration
As such, we considered consumers would understand the images and videos to be representative of the type of content they would encounter during gameplay, but would not generally expect to see those specific creatures, landscapes, battles and structures.”
Those interested can read the complete investigation note here.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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This means they can keep their bullshots in steam now, great
Bshots aren’t covered by the new policy, people still haven’t figured it out. -.-
Eh? They ask for in-game screenshots without advertisements, touch-ups etc, no?
Kinda, it is more like, it needs to represent what it is in game.
You can still touch it it a bit but not deviate too much like artworks, sketches, “doodles you grandma did on paint”, showing a full on 3D model if it is a 2D game and that sort of thing (like those box arts of yore for example).
Valve just want the marketing material on the body of the page rather than the screenshot section.
Legally this might make the assclowns across the entire industry feel a little safer about their shady, blatantly illegal tactics that nobody’s suing them or reporting them over constantly, but they’ll still be treading on thin ice for a while now.
No Man’s Lie was an (arguably) bigger joke than the Hype_Dogs debacle, so it’s going to have consequences, regardless of this.
The thing is, what else can be screwed up in such a big way that gets a company crippled so badly by the law?. I mean look at the Aliens case, GB came out unscathed, the smaller companies involved got crippled, then we have NMS and they are getting out fine for the most part, same with the Ark devs and their DLC crap.
I just think that the law will hardly be in favor of the consumer in the games industry, it’s just going to get worse and lawyers and their ilk will just reap tons of cash from our lack of benefit and the companies money.
Legally Hello Games might get away with it because nobody’s bothering to do anything against them, sure, but look at it from this angle;
– Every single Hello Games developer has been burned so badly, I think they’d rather put “previous place of employment – a Siberian Meat Locker” than “Hello Games” on their resume.
– Hello Games & Sean Murray themselves are f*cked. Even if they announce their next game is going to be “as legendary as Half-Life”, only the most die-hard of the Sean Sycophants Defense League people will ever stand with him before it’s actually proven to be that, after launch, & even then, it’ll never escape the “No Man’s Lie” stigma.
Remember Daikatana? It killed John Romero, who was basically a living legend at the time, rather than some idiot with a big mouth.
Sure, the Aliens case saw GB get away with it on the technicality, & it made all the other assclowns inflate their ego’s & start dropping the “May Not Be Representative of Final Footage” bottom-of-the-screen warnings (which even the Hype_Dogs Downgrading debacle didn’t bring back), but like I said, this was arguably even bigger than Hype_Dogs; even Valve was forced to respond, & those new rules are going to have some sort of effect on marketing, even if they don’t result in anyone paying any fines.
After all, you can’t make separate PC & console marketing campaigns, with the PC’s not looking “as good” because it has to follow Valve’s rules (read: no bullshots), no? As for the ARK case, well, if they keep going like this…. see EVOLVE – & just like those morons, they’ll also fully deserve it, of course. Now to be clear, Valve hasn’t annihilated bullshots entirely, no, but when 1/3rd of the “Platform Trinity” ups & does something like this, outside of the console-exclusives, this will have industry-wide ramifications.
This is ####. Lots of stuff shown is just NOT in the game. It has nothing to do with procedural generation, it’s not there in the actual code and game assets. It was purely made for advertising and misleading plebs. The ASA has taken action against scummy companies like crApple for far less. It seems like the people investigation this case are simply thick.
They do not understand that. They assessed their opinion only with what’s on the surface which is the procedureally generated stuff. Authorities are usually very good at scratching the surface of subjects that are rather deep.
Conspiracy
The “procedural nature of the game yadda yadda” is just one paragraph.
Tbh, even I expected the whole thing to be way more “meaty”. It’s just one page.
Ironically, they they have little no standards in the “meat” of their reports.
Number of Complaints: 23
I don’t know how I expected some “meat” out of that, lel.
Looks like the Advertising Standards Authority is enjoying the update right now
Advertising Standards Authority-True gamers
All politics. If they gave this game a slap on the wrist they would have to do the same to just about every game that is advertised at a big game convention like E3 or Gamescom and continues to use its early promo material around launch. They all do this, and then some. You will rarely see an ad for a game that doesn’t show vaporware features they later cut before launch. Or in the case of BF1 after launch, lmao.
Really?
No, you’re dreaming. Go back to sleep.
phew
“the ASA ruled No Man’s Sky did not deceive or mislead its customers.”
Who did then? Gimme a example.
“The law is like a fence. Big hounds jump over it, pups dig under it and idiots ram into it”. I learned these words from a man I greatly respect and admire.
Lolz. Time to go to Mars and make a new civilization. And here I thought this will be a start of a better future for gaming … I’m sooo fuc*ing naive —__—
Remember Chewbacca?
i member
Still won’t stop the morons trolling …
Ofcourse they are innocent. We are obviously the guilty ones for expecting to get sh*t they show.
Same standards of McDonalds Burgers.
Because reasons.
Games industry has hardly had a myriad of cases where consumers came out on top and said companies crushed hard for it. in other industries you’d see those cases go through and others winning.
Yeah, but in the long-term, it is a stain on the company’s reputation. Nvidia can get away with it more “because only two GPU companies”, sure, but video game publishers? With their constantly-decreasing degrees of quality, & constantly-increasing degrees of bullsh*t?
Not to mention court fees every time something like this happens, etc. Yes, the fines are sh*t, but it’s not just those expenses, either. But yeah, the lawyers got that bit locked down good…..