Update: Class Action Claims Colonial Marines Falsely Advertised

[fwiffo]

So, We're suing EA next for simcity's broken traffic right? Next we gotta sue blizzard, remember that dance studio or what the fuck ever for some wow xpac?

People need to stop buying shitty games. There are written reviews, video reviews, streams. Use em. Also, stop preordering stuff ;D

The problem is that those other things weren't specifically shown opposite in a demo and said to be a "vertical slice" of the game that players will actually get to experience. See, that's what Gearbox did. I never bought the game, never was interested in yet another Aliens game (last 5 sucked, what makes this one different?). However, I can see a HUGE difference in how the E3 -and other video game shows- Demo looks completely different than the retail versions that showed up on Youtube and game review sites (such as Escapist).

Things falsely advertised:

-Enemy AI => apparently so stupid that they'll walk into walls and ignore the players entirely. They won't climb the walls (like their demo showed), dodge humans by going into vents and around boxes and objects (like they showed in their demo), and will just run a straight line directly to the player in front of their gun just begging for a bullet (unlike the dodging that was shown in the demo)

-Textures and graphical features => Seems like even the highest setting computers aren't able to extract the textures and lighting from the real game that were shown in the demo. They look like a muddy mess, and lights aren't dynamic or reflective as advertised.


Those are the things that I know of, which to some may be like "really, that's it?". There might be more, but again I didn't buy the game or care about it. However, those things that I did list are key features to a video game and are a huge matter when purchasing said game. When they use fake materials to advertise features that aren't there to make people purchase a product that isn't as advertised, that's FALSE ADVERTISEMENT. Being a bad game isn't worthy of a lawsuit, but faking that bad game into looking good to sell more copies IS.

I agree its false advertisement.

Sorry I didn't word this well. I just don't think dragging every other game through litigation is going to really help. I think its more practical to promote consumer education. It won't solve the problem, but neither will suing everyone who falsely claims something.

I just don't believe if this case is won, that game companies will stop claiming/showing bullshit about their games. This happens too often. We need an actual lawyer who does false advertisement cases to weigh in on this issue. We have one of those right? I just think false advertisement happens too often (is sometimes subjective), so its not practical to sue over every case.

The only people who win with this case are gonna be the lawyers (imo, i don't know shit about shit, just heard a lot "false advertisement" claims in my life).

 

[VoidWanderer]

While I am not a man of religion, I will pray that the Judge sides with the plaintiffs on this one.

 

[irishda]

>fail to do research
>Buy shitty game for 60$
>sue
>receive thousands of dollars
>???
>Profit
American legal system, fuck yea.

What research, may I ask, could have lead to customers knowing they should cancel their preorders? The only available trailers and demos were basically complete fabrications and reviewers were legally prevented from saying anything prior to the games release despite knowing the game wasn't even close to what the demo promised.

Sure, it makes an argument for not pre-ordering in the future, but that doesn't negate the responsibility Sega and Gearbox had to not outright lie to their customers and cover it up until the very last second.

Maybe now people will realize how fucking stupid it is to buy something that's not even finished...

Also, I've compared some of the trailers. This is the Kick-ass Trailer released on Jan 24. The game came out on Feb. 12th. This is a video of the gameplay uploaded on release day. I don't see much in the way of graphical differences, and some of the scenes were even ones I recognized in the trailer, so I'm going to call bullshit on the notion that all of these trailers were completely made up. I can't speak much on missing features. I don't know what was promised and what was delivered, but it'd better be more than just "the AI was really dumb". Trying to prove that a level of intelligence from artificial constructs did not meet the expectations of the customer, and that the designer has any way of knowing an acceptable level of intelligence the customer expects, is pretty impossible.

 

[irishda]

Can we please, PLEASE, stop comparing games as products to practical products like dishwashers or houses. They are ENTERTAINMENT products. They in no way shape or form follow the same rules as other industries. You see, kids. One of those groups fulfills an objective purpose that, while the final result can be judged subjectively, e.g. are the dishes clean enough, the purpose can be definitively measured (were the dishes cleaned at all or did the machine just spit hot grease at them). In one of those instances, customers would say, "Gee, this isn't a very good dishwasher." In another, they would say, "Holy shit, this is broken." They might also believe it's not a very good dishwasher, but hopefully it's because they recognize that the dishwasher is not operating anywhere near the normal parameters with which a dishwasher functions.

Now, let's compare that situation with those of video games, namely, one of the earlier examples where people frequently cried false advertising, Mass Effect 3. A lot of customers said the game was broken and shit and wasn't nearly close to what was promised. A lot of OTHER customers said the game was fine and they kind of liked the endings. Do you see the difference? There's maybe one person on the planet that would disagree with everyone and say, "I think the hot grease spitting dishwasher is great!" And that person would probably be living in a place where everything that ran on electricity was considered magical. The divisive opinions on what do or don't constitute good video games proves there are very few instances when a game can be considered "broken" (for instance if instead of a disk you received a pop tart) and Aliens doesn't even remotely approach those examples.

TL;DR: Games aren't products like dishwashers or houses, so stop bringing them up.

 

[Caiphus]

Now, let's compare that situation with those of video games, namely, one of the earlier examples where people frequently cried false advertising, Mass Effect 3. A lot of customers said the game was broken and shit and wasn't nearly close to what was promised. A lot of OTHER customers said the game was fine and they kind of liked the endings. Do you see the difference? There's maybe one person on the planet that would disagree with everyone and say, "I think the hot grease spitting dishwasher is great!" And that person would probably be living in a place where everything that ran on electricity was considered magical. The divisive opinions on what do or don't constitute good video games proves there are very few instances when a game can be considered "broken" (for instance if instead of a disk you received a pop tart) and Aliens doesn't even remotely approach those examples.

Nothing in this paragraph would prevent an independent court from objectively determining if the average consumer would have been misled by advertising.

Just because there are few scientific measures by which entertainment can be measured (although there are a few), doesn't mean it cannot be objectively assessed.

EDIT: Although yes, whether or not the game turned out to be fun wouldn't be good cause for false advertising claims. "This game will be fun!" isn't false advertising, even if met with shitty review scores.

 

[Vrach]

God, I hope they get their asses kicked (Gearbox/Sega). It would be a terrific precedent to stop false marketing in the video game industry.

This is not a frivolous lawsuit btw. I don't know the US laws, but I imagine they're as, if not stricter than the ones we got in Serbia. In our Customer Protection Act (or however you'd translate it), it clearly states such false advertising is illegal. Saying your game is "awesome" and stuff like that is legal, it constitutes "usual trader overestimation", but telling people the product has qualities that it doesn't have is another thing entirely, and from what I hear of Aliens: CM, it's exactly the case.

Demo is not "showing work in progress". That's what an open/closed alpha/beta are. Demo is "this is what our game is".

 

[Colt47]

Spoiler

To those who claim that BioShock Infinite and Kill zone 2 are guilty of the same crime you have to remember that Sony and 2K eventually showed us what those games really looked like before those games released.

Gearbox and Segacon the other hand continued to only show doctored footage.

Definitely. Aliens Colonial Marines is textbook false advertising and there isn't any way around it unless someone wants to try driving the argument through a three ring circus of circular logic, and if some defense lawyer wants to really do that I'd question their moral integrity.

"Textbook false advertising"? I don't think there's such a thing as "textbook" false advertising of video games. There simply isn't any legal precedent. Even in the movie industry, which has been around for far longer, examples are few and far between.
The problem is that Edelson LLC would need to prove that:

A) Consumers were expecting something different when they bought the video game.
B) That expectation was caused by the demo.
C) The publishers deliberately tried to deceive the consumers, using the demo.

A and B are hard enough to prove as it is, but neither of them are as difficult to prove as C. The fact that advertising may have deceived someone doesn't mean that this is attributable to the salesman. For instance, when buying a video game someone expects it to be fun, but if it turns out not to be fun, that doesn't mean the salesman tried to trick you into thinking it was fun.
However, supposing that C was true, there's an implicit requirement in A that there is a large difference between what the game is and what the game was expected to be. If the game that was sold in the box turned out to be bunny rabbits hoping around in candy land for ten hours, then yes, it's pretty easy to prove that the consumers were expecting something else.
But it's not illegal to pretty things up in advertising and promotion material. Producers of food have been doing that for decades, using egg glaze on food for packet photographs. Also, models with highly stylized hair are used to advertise shampoo. Discrepancy is tolerated in advertising laws and it falls on the consumers to separate fact from fiction and make a prudent choice.
So with all that in mind, no, this is not a textbook example of false advertising. And as a matter of fact, I think this law suit has very little chance of success.

In this particular case I'd say otherwise. The demo was just worlds apart from what was delivered not just in quality, but how it played. Far Cry 3 was prettied up during it's demo and looked far better then at release, but the demo still played like the game did in the end.

 

[Farther than stars]

Spoiler

To those who claim that BioShock Infinite and Kill zone 2 are guilty of the same crime you have to remember that Sony and 2K eventually showed us what those games really looked like before those games released.

Gearbox and Segacon the other hand continued to only show doctored footage.

Definitely. Aliens Colonial Marines is textbook false advertising and there isn't any way around it unless someone wants to try driving the argument through a three ring circus of circular logic, and if some defense lawyer wants to really do that I'd question their moral integrity.

"Textbook false advertising"? I don't think there's such a thing as "textbook" false advertising of video games. There simply isn't any legal precedent. Even in the movie industry, which has been around for far longer, examples are few and far between.
The problem is that Edelson LLC would need to prove that:

A) Consumers were expecting something different when they bought the video game.
B) That expectation was caused by the demo.
C) The publishers deliberately tried to deceive the consumers, using the demo.

A and B are hard enough to prove as it is, but neither of them are as difficult to prove as C. The fact that advertising may have deceived someone doesn't mean that this is attributable to the salesman. For instance, when buying a video game someone expects it to be fun, but if it turns out not to be fun, that doesn't mean the salesman tried to trick you into thinking it was fun.
However, supposing that C was true, there's an implicit requirement in A that there is a large difference between what the game is and what the game was expected to be. If the game that was sold in the box turned out to be bunny rabbits hoping around in candy land for ten hours, then yes, it's pretty easy to prove that the consumers were expecting something else.
But it's not illegal to pretty things up in advertising and promotion material. Producers of food have been doing that for decades, using egg glaze on food for packet photographs. Also, models with highly stylized hair are used to advertise shampoo. Discrepancy is tolerated in advertising laws and it falls on the consumers to separate fact from fiction and make a prudent choice.
So with all that in mind, no, this is not a textbook example of false advertising. And as a matter of fact, I think this law suit has very little chance of success.

In this particular case I'd say otherwise. The demo was just worlds apart from what was delivered not just in quality, but how it played. Far Cry 3 was prettied up during it's demo and looked far better then at release, but the demo still played like the game did in the end.

Well, even if the judge rules in Edelson's favour on point A, point B will never be merited, because the demo was clearly branded as a "work in progress". In legal jargon that pretty much means immunity from false advertising convictions based on that demonstration.

 

[irishda]

Now, let's compare that situation with those of video games, namely, one of the earlier examples where people frequently cried false advertising, Mass Effect 3. A lot of customers said the game was broken and shit and wasn't nearly close to what was promised. A lot of OTHER customers said the game was fine and they kind of liked the endings. Do you see the difference? There's maybe one person on the planet that would disagree with everyone and say, "I think the hot grease spitting dishwasher is great!" And that person would probably be living in a place where everything that ran on electricity was considered magical. The divisive opinions on what do or don't constitute good video games proves there are very few instances when a game can be considered "broken" (for instance if instead of a disk you received a pop tart) and Aliens doesn't even remotely approach those examples.

Nothing in this paragraph would prevent an independent court from objectively determining if the average consumer would have been misled by advertising.

Just because there are few scientific measures by which entertainment can be measured (although there are a few), doesn't mean it cannot be objectively assessed.

EDIT: Although yes, whether or not the game turned out to be fun wouldn't be good cause for false advertising claims. "This game will be fun!" isn't false advertising, even if met with shitty review scores.

The few measures that do exist pretty much just measure whether or not the product in question was actually that product (See pop-tart reference).

 

[M920CAIN]

I like this, is it wrong to like this? Blizzard has been doing this for years! They got ultra badass trailers, but the games... slugs.

 

[Signa]

Can the movie industry be sued for this too? I'm sick of seeing scenes in trailers that don't make it to the final cut. Same thing in my opinion.

 

[RJ 17]

"We'll continue to defend the right to show off works-in-progress." Yeah, well that's the problem. Works-in-progress tend to be worse off than the finished product since they're still "in progress". In this case the finished product was worse than the "in progress" one appeared to be.

 

[Caiphus]

Now, let's compare that situation with those of video games, namely, one of the earlier examples where people frequently cried false advertising, Mass Effect 3. A lot of customers said the game was broken and shit and wasn't nearly close to what was promised. A lot of OTHER customers said the game was fine and they kind of liked the endings. Do you see the difference? There's maybe one person on the planet that would disagree with everyone and say, "I think the hot grease spitting dishwasher is great!" And that person would probably be living in a place where everything that ran on electricity was considered magical. The divisive opinions on what do or don't constitute good video games proves there are very few instances when a game can be considered "broken" (for instance if instead of a disk you received a pop tart) and Aliens doesn't even remotely approach those examples.

Nothing in this paragraph would prevent an independent court from objectively determining if the average consumer would have been misled by advertising.

Just because there are few scientific measures by which entertainment can be measured (although there are a few), doesn't mean it cannot be objectively assessed.

EDIT: Although yes, whether or not the game turned out to be fun wouldn't be good cause for false advertising claims. "This game will be fun!" isn't false advertising, even if met with shitty review scores.

The few measures that do exist pretty much just measure whether or not the product in question was actually that product (See pop-tart reference).

Sure, I'm saying you wouldn't need to give the consumer something as wildly different as a pop tart for the advertising to be considered false; we saw this with The War Z.

Advertising (I can't remember actual numbers) 80 player server support and only giving 40 is an objective standard. The same would be said (although none of this is the case with A: CM) of advertising controller support and then not giving it, advertising language support and not giving it, probably even advertising wildly different campaign length (you say the campaign is 40 hours long, while in reality it is 10).

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't see this case going anywhere to be honest. With precisely zero precedent supporting the position and a long standing history in Entertainment of showing a sizzle reel that may (or may not) represent the final product, there really isn't anything to latch on to. The case argues far too tenuous a point to be actionable. My money says that, at best, this gets settled out of court for a trivial sum.

 

[Mr C]

I would like to point out to the naysayers on this suit. The effectively promised a freshly cut two inch Salmon steak and gave you a can of Tuna instead. It was not a case of different features etc it was a case of different ENGINE, and not in the upgrade way either. Even the damn box art on the back does not look like the game.

Quoted for truth

 

[Mr C]

I understand the frustration, but it would be a real shame if something like this made people like Pitchford unwilling to communicate with the fanbase

Actually, it would have been much better if he had kept his stupid fucking mouth closed. Then when the game finally came out we would have ignored it based on the pile of shit it was. Or I may have bought it and then thought, "I'm an idiot for buying this shit - I am to blame".

Yet when promises are made and the guy in charge shows you something that is far superior to what is released - it just makes me mad. Some detractors of this case seem to forget/not realise that the 10 minute 'vertical slice of gameplay' was actually given commentary by Pitchford HIMSELF, who at times gives advice/complements to the person 'playing' the game e.g. "dude the CO-OP guy is getting out of here, you'd better follow him" - "nice shot, watch the acid". He even offers advice in the final sequence before the queen bursts in and criticises the 'player's' shooting skills.

That is bullshit.

EDIT: Pitchford "that is a quick taste of Aliens: Colonial Marines. It is a section from act 2 of the game..hope you enjoyed this clip of gameplay demonstration"

What a tosspot.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It is a dangerous situation. I suppose there are roughly two paths to try and avoid it - 1. don't show anything until the game is almost done 2. only allow preorders if it's almost done and there is material showing the current state of the game and heavily lace every material released before with "NOT THE FINAL PRODUCT!".

What a nasty situation to be in:

If the case succeeds against them, and new precedent is established, game companies are going to have to be extremely careful with their demos to avoid future lawsuits (or probably avoid using them altogether, which is not desirable at all).

If it fails, the informed customer is going to have to just assume that any official demos given are questionable at best or altogether worthless. I know I certainly would not do any business with a company who engages in such practices, period.

Well, if the case against them fails, and the precedent isn't established, we return to the status quo.
Only with more controversial demos in the future (*insert generic useless slippery slope accusation here*) because if Gearbox can get away with flagrantly false advertising that clinched pre-orders, you can bet someone else is going to give it a try too.

 

[pandorum]

I don't know about anyone else but I have lost confidence in Gearbox, and am now starting to think they lucked out with Borderlands maybe. I really do not trust anything that they make now.

 

[maninahat]

Seems like the same could be said of Bioshock: Infinite, being that a lot changed between the early demo trailers (all containing "in game footage") with the final product. Elizabeth completely changed in terms of appearance, powers and situation. Loadsa scripted stuff never appeared in the final product. Even the plot looks to have been entirely re-written in between trailers.

But Bioshock: Infinite was good, so I guess people wouldn't go to the trouble of suing them for false advertising?

 

[timboo_drow]

This lawsuit is stupid. No one forced people to pre-order this game based on incomplete information. The AC:M's customers chose to buy an unfinished product, as is the case with everyone who pre-orders. Publishers are catching on that they don't have to fully deliver on a game because they already have your money. They build up your good will and then cash in on it. It's a 100% un-sustainable business practice, but it's not illegal. It's deceptive, but that is the whole point of advertising, marketing and PR: to trick you into buying something.

The only solution is to stop pre-ordering shit. Don't buy a game until you know it's good, until your trusted reviewers have weighed in. If publishers say they need your money beforehand to finish their game then they need to do what any successful business does: cut costs so they can stay afloat long enough to produce the product that generates revenue. If companies can't do that, then they aren't responsible enough to produce good games either. Companies have been creating awesome games, and remaining profitable, for years without having to fleece the consumer before the game is even available.

The sooner the bloated AAA industry can crash and go away so that real game developers can get back to controlling the industry the better.