The UK Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, has ruled that Hello Games did not mislead consumers over the contents of the space exploration game No Man's Sky.
In the four page ruling the advertising regulator stated that it had received a total of 23 complaints from gamers who believed that some of the game content was not as depicted or described, challenged whether the ad was misleading.
To research the claims the ASA took to the game's Steam Store page to find out if the available videos and screenshots were on par with what is actually available in the game.
During its research the ASA received both information from Valve, to find out how much freedom the game developer had in terms of advertising, and Hello Games, to find out which elements were actually in the game and which were not.
In total the ASA reviewed 8 core points: user interface changes, structures and buildings, water physics and graphics, high quality graphics, flying smoothly from space to planetary surfaces with no loading screens, trade convoys travel between stars, behaviour of enemy ships and sentinels and large-scale space battles.
All of the core points reviewed were deemed to exist in the game after the regulator had received information from the game developer which showcased the features in gameplay videos it had created. As such the advertising regulator says the claims from gamers could not be upheld.
The ASA and Hello Games claim that because the game is being procedurally generated, content may be less likely to occur based on how rare something may be.
However, in the research conducted by ASA, the advertising regulator failed to look into the many months of advertising prior to the game being listed on Steam.
For example, during an interview with TV-host Stephen Colbert, Hello Games founder Sean Murray claimed that players would be able to meet each other, even though occurrences would be very rare, which turned out to be false.
In other interviews Murray claimed that players would be able to freely travel between galaxies without loading screens.
On the point of loading screens the advertising regulator does note that warping between galaxies may be considered as being a loading screen, but also states that "it did not represent an interruption to the gameplay experience, as it was contiguous and consistent with the preceding and following gameplay sequences."
On social media gamers are not happy with the recent ruling, stating that the ASA has gone out of its way to "defend a clearly over-marketed series of videos, screenshots, and store descriptions."
Whether the ruling of the ASA will be maintained is currently unknown. One of the 23 gamers who submitted a complaint with the ASA has already stated he will appeal the ruling.
Earlier this month Valve announced that it had introduced new Steam Store regulations that prevents developers from uploading material that does not accurately depict their games.
