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U.K. Ad Watchdog Rules No Man's Sky Steam Page Not In Violation
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), an independent U.K. advertising regulator, ruled after investigation that the Steam page for Hello Games' No Man's Sky was not misleading to consumers.
The ASA followed up on 23 complaints regarding the page, which some believed showed content that was "not as depicted or described," according to the ASA.
The ASA ruling goes through the various complaints levied at the Steam page, including whether certain animals, the size of the space battles, and the HUD used in screens were in the game, as well as how representative the depictions of warp times between systems were and the assets' overall graphic quality.
The agency talked to Hello Games about the title, and the developer supplied a copy of the game and links to third-party footage backing up the studio's case. After sifting through everything, the ASA determined that the page was not misleading. An excerpt of the ruling reads:
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.
[Source: ASA via Ars Technica]
Our Take
After reading the ruling, it appears that the ASA took all of the complaints seriously and grasped the issues raised. Although not necessarily directly applicable to this situation, overall it is good to see that Valve has moved towards showing more in-game footage of titles on Steam to attempt to minimize consumer confusion in the future.
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