Update: Class Action Claims Colonial Marines Falsely Advertised

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I'm not normally in favour of lawsuits that aren't really very solid, but I hope this one wins. The prefabricated footage was used basically until the game came out. There were points when people could purchase the game having seen only the footage. If anything comes out of this, I hope publishers are forced to allow reviews/release representative material in advance of when a game can be purchased, pre-ordered or otherwise.

I think the main issue here is that the demo footage was not work in progress, and not a demo, not intended as part of the game, but fabricated, and that was masked deliberately.

 

[The White Hunter]

Seems legit. It was horribly falseley advertised to be fair, that trailer looked awesome and then the game is kinda.. not...

Dead horse, lets flog it some more in hopes of it being a money pinata!

Honestly we should support this not because it's a money pinata or whatever, but because the game industry DOES need to be held accountable for the awful business decisions it makes at the expense of the consumer. Even if the class action suit doesn't get through the company will have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars or more that it wouldn't have had to if it had just been fucking honest with us. It will make game companies more careful about how and what they advertise and if the cases gets through and the prosecution wins then they'll have even more incentive to not pull that shit in the future.

Hopefully it does send a message about quality control, and one I was hopinh Sega had learend from it's horrible Sonic titles between shadow and black knight...

Tens of thousands won't be enough though, itd have to b e in the millions before anyone bats an eyelid at it sadly.

 

[Do4600]

This was a case of a company flat out lying to the public right up until it was released and gagging the media so they couldn't say anything until after the game was out.

I'm curious--was there some sort of legally-binding contract preventing any members of the press who had pre-release knowledge of the game from talking? (And, if yes, is that typical for these things?)

Yes and Yes. The video game company sends press packets containing the game before it's release to reviewers on the condition of a non-disclosure agreement, that the reviewer will not publish on the results of the game content until a certain date. Usually the reviews are released a couple days or a day before the actual release of the game, if the game company directs the reviewers to release it after the game release, you can tell something strange is going on. If the reviewer releases a review before the date stipulated by the disclosure agreement I believe they could be sued and probably not be trusted with a press packet ever again, effectively ending their career as a launch day reviewer.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Personally, I would rather be shown nothing until the game is released, rather than be shown a lie

True, no information is preferable to misinformation.
But at the same time, no information means we're effectively back to blind guessing...or misinformation if we're going on marketing.