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Sega Europe Adds Coy Disclaimer to Aliens: Colonial Marine Videos
Just when you thought it was safe to forget about Aliens: Colonial Marines, the UK's Advertising Standards Agency has weighed in on the discrepancies between pre-release trailers and the retail game.
The complaint was allegedly submitted by Reddit user subpardave, who also shared an image of the response he received. The government group agreed to "informally uphold" the grievance, and accepted Sega Europe's measure to include a disclaimer in the notes section of their YouTube videos for the title.
The text reads: "The trailer footage shown uses the in-game engine, and represents a work in progress."
While technically true, the unique nature of Aliens: Colonial Marines creates a conundrum. It is rare that a game looks and performs worse in final form than in pre-release builds, however that's just what happened here. Expectations that titles improve throughout the development cycle are both reasonable and pervasive amongst consumers. In short, this new sentence does little to inform a potential purchaser that the retail product is less polished than demonstrations shown at major conventions and industry events.
Furthermore, the note only appears underneath the trailer on YouTube. The video is unchanged, and the text is not included as an annotation or in added frames. Embedded footage viewed anywhere other than YouTube's site does not display the new disclaimer either.
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