False Advertising Is Basically Legal.

[Drathnoxis]

So who else has seen this?

​

You can't trust anything you see as a game is marketed. Screenshots, trailers, even demos can be faked with pretty much no consequence.

Remember that class action lawsuit against Aliens: Colonial Marines? Gearbox won.

You just cannot be too skeptical these days. Seeing isn't believing.

 

[Laxer]

This isn't the case everywhere. In Sweden misleading marketing regarding the quality of the product is illegal. The limitations of this law presented in this video are not present here, in the same form.

 

[Fox12]

This is why I watch Let's Play videos before buying.

 

[Saelune]

CaitSeith basically made this topic a few days ago with that same video as their base. Not saying we cannot revive the discussion, just giving them some deserved credit.

I am very much on the side of far stricter False Advertising laws. Show me what I can do, dont use an outlandish metaphor or something, especially when it shows your product doing something it just cannot. Do I really think your car can drive up walls? No. But I still dont think that should be allowed to be even mildly suggested.

Beer and many grooming products are also pretty awful. Some can be argued to defend their suggestion of getting laid, since looking nicer or smelling nicer usually does help, but well, Axe body spray.

And ofcourse video games. I remember being fooled by the Black Ops 2 commercial:
It clearly suggests this whole thing is showing multiplayer, but it is combining multiplayer and single player elements. I genuinely expected horse mounts in multiplayer but thats just one silly level's gimmick.

 

[Drathnoxis]

CaitSeith basically made this topic a few days ago with that same video as their base. Not saying we cannot revive the discussion, just giving them some deserved credit.

Oh shoot, you're right! I never noticed that thread for some reason, title just didn't catch my eye.

Oh well, I figure this kind of thing bears repeating.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

So who else has seen this?

You can't trust anything you see as a game is marketed. Screenshots, trailers, even demos can be faked with pretty much no consequence.

Remember that class action lawsuit against Aliens: Colonial Marines? Gearbox won.

You just cannot be too skeptical these days. Seeing isn't believing.

whoa, you mean people still watch screenshots, trailers and play demos? Because I certainly don't. Didn't do it for years. All those are INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED to fool you into buying their stuff. If those high quality slideshows drawn by professional whatever are selling the games they are merely doing their job.

Oh well. I personally welcome this change. The world needs more skeptics.

Lastly, always remember that Let's plays are not worth believing either - Not after what WB pulled with MORDORRRE.

 

[Pseudonym]

CaitSeith basically made this topic a few days ago with that same video as their base. Not saying we cannot revive the discussion, just giving them some deserved credit.

I'll give a link here.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.943637-Lets-Discuss-How-reasonable-is-a-reasonable-videogame-consumer

As for being skeptical of claims by advertisers. If the sky were advertised as blue, you should look out of the window to double check. Not that I never get fooled, but I think even without this specific legal information we should know not to trust ads by now. Those of them that don't outright lie make claims that cannot be checked and are preposterous on their face. How many times do you see something said or implied like: "Real men buy beer from brand X", "buying our deodorant will get you laid", "you have won 1.000.000 dollars, click on our scam to collect", "our cleaning product will make everything it touches glitter instantly", "buy our product to help cause X in an entirely unspecified way", etc, etc. We all expect this kind of dishonesty to some degree. It's sad. I wouldn't mind if the rules on advertising got much, much stricter.

 

[bluegate]

Can't really be bothered about this in this industry, really.

There are articles of reviewers dissecting a game even before it releases, streamers fall over themselves in order to do let's plays of games on their release date, waiting one, or maybe two to three days will have a game's nasty secrets out in the open for everyone to see. Companies even send out free copies of their games to these media outlets and streamers.

There is ample opportunity for consumers to inform themselves about the actual product before buying it, if you still let yourself be fooled by 'false advertisement', then that's square on you in this case for all I'm concerned. Granted this only works for as long as there are people willing to make the plunge and buy the game at launch and actually divulge information on it, but this is something I don't see changing any time soon.

 

[DoPo]

Remember that class action lawsuit against Aliens: Colonial Marines? Gearbox won.

No, they didn't. Gearbox were excluded from the suit, since they shifted the blame. That does not constitute a "win", unless you mean it in the sense of "not an actual court win, they just 'won' in the sense that they weren't sued". The lawsuit did continue, though. Eventually, there it was settled and Sony paid some money.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Eh, and Murdoch won a lawsuit that basically says his news outlets are not legally required to be truthful, in the US at least. That is far more worrying than some entertainment advertisement for something that can be easily disproven for free just by being patient and not letting childish excitement get the better of your spending habits. The whole point of marketing is to only show you all the potential positives and scrub any hint of the negatives away. That is all it does at its' most ethical. The sooner you learn to ignore or distance yourself from marketing, the better.

 

[KaraFang]

Well, in the UK:

2. Regulations that affect advertising
Advertising to consumers
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations mean you can?t mislead or harass consumers by, for example:

including false or deceptive messages
leaving out important information
using aggressive sales techniques
Read ?The consumer protection from unfair trading regulations? for the rules on advertising legally.

Advertising to businesses
Advertising to businesses is covered by the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations. As well as being accurate and honest, you must not make misleading comparisons with competitors, that includes:

using a competitor?s logo or trademark, or something very similar
comparing your product with a competitor?s product that?s not the same
Download ?The Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008? for more detail about the regulations that cover advertising to businesses.

Penalties
If you break the regulations, you could be reported to a local Trading Standards office. You could be fined, prosecuted or imprisoned.

They're actually pretty good at looking into this stuff. Computer games are still new enough in "law" that they're trying to work out what "false" advertising is in relation to these, but last I checked they are starting to seriously look at the pre release and trailer stuff that is shown at E3 and on TV.

 

[mizushinzui]

Well, in the UK:

2. Regulations that affect advertising
Advertising to consumers
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations mean you can?t mislead or harass consumers by, for example:

including false or deceptive messages
leaving out important information
using aggressive sales techniques
Read ?The consumer protection from unfair trading regulations? for the rules on advertising legally.

Advertising to businesses
Advertising to businesses is covered by the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations. As well as being accurate and honest, you must not make misleading comparisons with competitors, that includes:

using a competitor?s logo or trademark, or something very similar
comparing your product with a competitor?s product that?s not the same
Download ?The Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008? for more detail about the regulations that cover advertising to businesses.

Penalties
If you break the regulations, you could be reported to a local Trading Standards office. You could be fined, prosecuted or imprisoned.

They're actually pretty good at looking into this stuff. Computer games are still new enough in "law" that they're trying to work out what "false" advertising is in relation to these, but last I checked they are starting to seriously look at the pre release and trailer stuff that is shown at E3 and on TV.

I'm pretty sure that this is the reason that Hello Games were getting into trouble, because they're a UK based company and we have false advertising laws .

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Yeah I saw that on the other thread. I say it's bullshit. As I said on the other thread there is a huge difference between making a fast food burger look pretty and promoting a game by almost showing a entirely different product.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Remember that class action lawsuit against Aliens: Colonial Marines? Gearbox won.

No, they didn't. Gearbox were excluded from the suit, since they shifted the blame. That does not constitute a "win", unless you mean it in the sense of "not an actual court win, they just 'won' in the sense that they weren't sued". The lawsuit did continue, though. Eventually, there it was settled and Sony paid some money.

I actually did mean "win" in the sense that they did something bad and wriggled their way out of punishment. It was Sega though, not Sony.

I can't actually seem to find any articles about the resolution of the case, do you have a link?

 

[DoPo]

I can't actually seem to find any articles about the resolution of the case, do you have a link?

I was just going off memory, but I quickly checked Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gearbox_Software#Aliens:_Colonial_Marines_controversy]:

Sega and the plaintiffs reached a settlement in late 2014, wherein Sega agreed to pay $1.25 million to the class.

Following up on the links there led me to to the court documents on the tentative settlement [https://www.scribd.com/document/236545613/Tentative-Aliens-Colonial-Marines-settlement].

 

[Silvanus]

I'm pretty sure that this is the reason that Hello Games were getting into trouble, because they're a UK based company and we have false advertising laws .

And yet, the press has no legal obligation to avoid demonstrable falsehood, libel, and such. It's good that we have false advertising laws, but the double standards in UK media law make me cry. Lying is ok for some, and not for others, it seems.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I can't actually seem to find any articles about the resolution of the case, do you have a link?

I was just going off memory, but I quickly checked Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gearbox_Software#Aliens:_Colonial_Marines_controversy]:

Sega and the plaintiffs reached a settlement in late 2014, wherein Sega agreed to pay $1.25 million to the class.

Following up on the links there led me to to the court documents on the tentative settlement [https://www.scribd.com/document/236545613/Tentative-Aliens-Colonial-Marines-settlement].

Oh, that. That was back in 2014. I don't think that settlement was actually reached because other articles like this one reporting on Gearbox being dropped from the case in 2015 refer to it like

The judge in the case also ruled that the suit, which still stands against publisher Sega and once nearly reached a $1.25 million settlement, is no longer a class action and will only be representative of the two original gamers who filed the suit through law firm Edelson LLC in the Northern District of California in April, 2013.

I don't know how to read legal documents though, was that settlement actually reached? Because the Wikipedia article says it's "to the class" and the class status was dropped.

 

[mizushinzui]

I'm pretty sure that this is the reason that Hello Games were getting into trouble, because they're a UK based company and we have false advertising laws .

And yet, the press has no legal obligation to avoid demonstrable falsehood, libel, and such. It's good that we have false advertising laws, but the double standards in UK media law make me cry. Lying is ok for some, and not for others, it seems.

It's an unfortunate truth that the media in the UK is so odd, it's not even the worst in the world, it just operates in such a strange way from a cultural acceptance level alone. Like back in the day when the UK papers made a huge uproar over Chris Morris when he made the peadogeddon episode of Brass Eye and they said it was sick, then had articles about under age girls presented in a sexaul way.

The papers in the UK are the strangest in the world, if not the worst.

 

[CaitSeith]

CaitSeith basically made this topic a few days ago with that same video as their base. Not saying we cannot revive the discussion, just giving them some deserved credit.

Oh shoot, you're right! I never noticed that thread for some reason, title just didn't catch my eye.

Oh well, I figure this kind of thing bears repeating.

To be fair, I created the thread to discuss what defines a reasonable videogame consumer (I'm still pretty baffled that something so subjective is part of the law against unfair/deceptive advertisement).

 

[Joccaren]

CaitSeith basically made this topic a few days ago with that same video as their base. Not saying we cannot revive the discussion, just giving them some deserved credit.

Oh shoot, you're right! I never noticed that thread for some reason, title just didn't catch my eye.

Oh well, I figure this kind of thing bears repeating.

To be fair, I created the thread to discuss what defines a reasonable videogame consumer (I'm still pretty baffled that something so subjective is part of the law against unfair/deceptive advertisement).

To be fair, "Reasonable" is a part of many parts of the law, and its taken in a slightly more objective sense than subjective. Its an aggregate of sorts of what the average person in the same situation as the person in question would do. So, if we're talking just a general videogame player, a "Reasonable" videogame player would be your average person who plays videogames. On the flipside, say it the plaintiff were an expert on all things videogames, a "Reasonable" person would be the average person who was an expert on all things videogames. So its less "Reasonable" in the sense of what is actually reasonable, and more referring to the average person as reasonable.

In terms of advertising, this means that if the average person wouldn't believe something in a trailer to be true, then the reasonable person wouldn't believe it to be true. This only counts for more outlandish claims though, and subjective statements, and doesn't relate to objective facts stated about things [I.E: If someone said "This game will run at 1080p", no reasonable test is required; that is an objective promise about what the game will do]. This is all rooted in contract law, and is less subjective than it sounds, but yeah, to some extent is subjective, because we're talking about a subjective matter.

Overall it means you're allowed to embellish your description of your product in order to sell it - as in general this is good for society [More sales, more economic activity, more jobs, more cashflow through the economy] - but you're not allowed to outright lie about it. Videogames border the line a lot of the time, and thanks to it being a rather new medium, the law isn't 100% clear on how to deal with it. [Say, for instance, showing off gameplay from a demo version of the game, but that demo version is cut - like Bioshock Infinite did. Is that false advertising? If so, then you either can't preview your game at all before sale, or you can't make necessary development decisions and your product's quality suffers because you're locked into something you showed earlier, or talked about, but that no longer is possible to do properly within budget. Drawing the line between this, and more questionable cases like with NMS, is more difficult than it sounds, and that's something the law has a bit of trouble with].

That said, the "Reasonable" test is important. It ensures you're able to say subjective things, that consumers aren't expected to be experts in a given field, and that companies aren't punished if a consumer is an expert in a given field and "falls for" something they know to be false on purpose simply to create damages and sue a company.

At least that's how it works down here. Law is complicated though, and looking at the State's sometimes I think your law is nuts.