It’s been revealed that the Advertising Standards Agency has found that No Man’s Sky’s controversial Steam page was not misleading to consumers, following a short investigation.
The ASA received 23 complaints from people, who claimed that the game’s Steam page used inaccurate screenshots and videos to represent the final product. The findings mean that Hello Games can keep the offending screens on Steam, and won’t face any repercussions from governing bodies.
Hello GamesThe game’s release was marred with criticism after teaser trailers and pictures showed giant creatures roaming lush, vibrant planets, intense space combat and even hints of multiplayer gaming – things that people felt never made it into the game when it was released.
Complaints also focused on the fact that screenshots misrepresented the game’s graphical fidelity, which seemed downgraded and sometimes entirely different in the final product.
Hello GamesHello Games defended themselves by stressing that because the game is procedurally generated, user experiences vary from playthrough to playthrough.
In their lengthy report, the ASA elaborated on this:
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.
The report itself is hugely in-depth, and well worth a read if you’re interested, link again is here. The TL;DR version is that everything in the game was “similar” to what was shown in the adverts, and everything they did show, was the game in its best light. In essence, just because you haven’t seen it, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Hello Games recently released a huge update for the No Man’s Sky, which added base building and a survival mode among other things.
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.