UK regulator: No Man’s Sky advertising matches actual game
The British advertising regulator ASA has completed its investigation into the advertising around the game No Man’s Sky. The organization looked at videos and images posted on the game’s Steam page. These would match the actual game.
The investigation, which began in late September, was conducted in response to complaints from 23 individuals, the ASA reports. During the investigation, Hello Games stated that most of the advertising material was captured on a standard PC during a four-hour play session. With this, the studio wanted to demonstrate that the objects and environments in the videos and images actually exist in the game. Complaints focused, among other things, on the fact that the quality of the images did not correspond to reality, that certain buildings were not found in the game and that the speed of warping was excessive.
The ASA has reviewed every complaint and has concluded that the material on Steam’s store page cannot be viewed as misleading. The organization states that it must have been clear to players in advance that elements from the game are automatically generated and that there are therefore differences in the experiences of individual players. Regarding the complaint that the game’s interface had changed, the regulator says it cannot have influenced the decision to buy the game or not.
Hello Games was also able to demonstrate that buildings and water appearing in the advertisement do indeed appear in the game. The same was true for space battles. Some parts did not match, such as the behavior of animals. The ASA says that these are indeed differences from the actual game, but that these scenes are so short-lived in the videos that they cannot have influenced the decision to buy the game. As a result, there is no deception.
In addition, it turned out that No Man’s Sky can offer better graphics quality than shown in the images and videos. The speed of warps would depend on the specs of the player’s PC and the complexity of the system he is traveling to. The complaint that the warping goes against the claim that there are “no loading screens” in the game, the ASA deems unfounded because it does not constitute an interruption to the game.
Hello Games recently announced a new update to No Man’s Sky, in the form of the ‘Foundation Update’. This makes it possible, among other things, to build bases and buy cargo ships. The announcement by Hello Games broke a long radio silence, during which the studio had not been heard from. Players of the game were dissatisfied with this behavior and the fact that the game failed to deliver on certain promises. This resulted in a large amount of negative reactions to the game.
A base from the Foundation Update