Remember those adverts and trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines? The ones with the moody lighting and lovely textures? Well, when the game was released, it failed to look quite that good and many customers and onlookers were very vocally annoyed by that. Some even stopped venting on forums long enough to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The response letter from the ASA has been linked on Reddit by the user who received it. In that letter, Sega acknowledges that the trailers “did not accurately reflect the final content of the game.” The company also asserts that the trailers were created using the in-game engine, which, given the similarities between those trailers and the final product, seems obvious – even if it was a version of the in-game engine that had much more devotion to lighting models.
Sega has agreed to post a disclaimer on the videos to notify viewers that they depict demo versions of the game, rather than the finished product. There’s no mention of a fine with the ASA stating that they don’t think the ads, with this disclaimer in place, are likely to mislead.
As you’ll see in the trailer embedded above, this disclaimer is not yet in place on the YouTube videos, which actually have a large pre-roll notice that it’s all “in-game footage” – something which , in-game engine or not, is seemingly untrue. This video was posted by Sega of America, so perhaps the concession to the ASA will only apply to Sega’s UK practices. That’s something which is mostly useless in the internet age, of course.
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So does this mean I can get a refund for my CE?
I want to agree with you but I am happy with mine just the game was a tad disappointing with false videos.
Still boxed though ^^
The funny thing is even with the “depict demo versions of the game” disclaimer, people are going to read that (wrongly) that if this is just a demo, then the real game will look even better.
Same engine. Pull the other one Sega.
Dead island anyone?
That was a cgi trailer was it not? Personally i didn’t think the Dead Island trailer would be any sort of representation of the game.
great, so now when we see a watermark saying demo version, theres a possibility that the game could actually look/play even worse. Since when do demos look better than the final product? Instead of making a separate better looking/feeling demo how about just making a better looking/feeling game?