BBB Says Mass Effect 3 Falsely Advertised
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 3:19 pm Category: Editorial, News, Video GamesThere’s been a lot of chatter about Mass Effect 3 and its ending since it launched a little over a month ago. We’ve covered the controversy here like many other news sites. A new development in the situation has now arisen with the Better Business Bureau calling Bioware’s claims to meaningful choices to actually have been false advertising.
What this means in the long run is fairly irrelevant, though it may have some portent to the sort of litigious person who takes advantage of the U.S. legal system. The BBB is a consumer advocacy group with no actual legal authority. While complaints have been made to an organization that does have legal power, the FTC, no mention has yet been made of whether they’re even investigating the claims. The BBB’s interpretation of the claims is available on their blog.
Their essential argument rests on one bullet point from Bioware’s advertising:
“Experience the beginning, middle, and end of an emotional story unlike any other, where the decisions you make completely shape your experience and outcome”.
According to them, this is an “absolute” statement and therefore must be upheld as true in the final product. I can see the point, as many of the decisions, though they did change a few in-game events, did not actually shape the outcome.
As I mentioned above, this doesn’t actually change anything, and likely won’t make a difference in the long run. The BBB could lower their rating of Bioware and EA as a consumer-friendly companies. But who checks that stuff when they’re buying a game? That’s why we use Metacritic. With no legal authority, the BBB likely can’t take this any further than simply expressing an opinion.
But what if they could? Does that mean I can sue a studio for calling a movie the “feel-good comedy of the year” or other such nonsense? Maybe sue McDonald’s for advertising their best french fries ever?
What do you think? Did they actually falsely advertise their game, or just not fulfill an expectation? Sound off in the comments.
Responses to “BBB Says Mass Effect 3 Falsely Advertised”
I just want Mass Effect 3 to go away.
Yes, they are guilty of false advertising. But more for other statements like there is no A B or C ending and such.
I wouldn’t go as far as suing because I dont have the time. But yes they did falsely adverstised. Is clear as day anyone who says otherwise is either blind or in denial. They stated 16 different endings. A different colored explosion doesn’t qualify as different, and even then is only 9 I think.
HOpefully this person takes it to court or what not. The more harm is done to their pockets the more they pay attention to fans. In the end that is the only real way to get a company to listen regardless of their product. Harm their image or pocket, hopefully both and they listen.
People need to get over themselves… It’s just a damn game
“It’s just a game…” It is a $60 to $80 game. Not everyone has a lot of spare cash to toss around these days and some folks don’t like being lied to by someone wanting those dollars. Personally my favorite lie is this one:
“There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions. So it’s not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things – it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it’s going to be different for everyone who plays it.”
Casey Hudson (Director) 2/17/12
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/336331/interviews/mass-effect-3-we-cant-go-on-holiday-our-dlc-is-really-good/?page=2
Ah yes, Metacritic… It can’t be fooled or exploited by the people who make the games…
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Dragon-Age-RPG-Avanost-LupoTheeButcher-Metacritic,12397.html
Oh wait… Well its not like EA would stack the deck with other reviews either…
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/10/ea-caught-pressuring-publications-over-battlefield-3-reviews/
Oh darn, that just looks worse and worse doesn’t it…
Ah well… By the way, love the add for Star Wars: the Old Republic on the sidebar.
@T. Veyl and Zibanitum:
Technically neither of those statements can be considered false advertising. Those statements are made in promotion of a game during an interview, but are not the same as “advertising” as defined by the BBB.
Odd analogy, but the first President Bush vowed not to raise taxes. When he did just that, it wasn’t false advertising because he said it in a campaign speech, not an ad.
However, your points are valid in a “betraying the consumer’s trust” perspective.
*head hits table repeatedly* MAKE IT STOP!
Weather its technically an advertisement or not is besides the point. Many of the development leads made many specific statements regarding game content. Just because it didn’t happen to be in a paid commercial or web banner does not make it any less of an advertisement. They still mislead customers, and should be held to task for it.
EA was quietly handing out full refunds to unhappy customers who bought ME3 trough Origin rather than have to deal with the fallout of so many dissatisfied customers unable to return a product that didn’t preform as advertised. They just wanted this to go away. Amazon.com was accepting refund requests, marking them as defective while amazon-europe took returns that claimed the product didn’t function as advertised.
@Zib – For the record, I think we agree philosophically. I’m sort of devil’s advocate here. I was referring only to what the BBB sees as “advertising” and differentiating that from the myriad ways we’ve been promised content.
Based on your contentions though, how has Peter Molyneux not been lynched for the outright promises he made about specific content and actions that would be in the Fable series but weren’t? And why wouldn’t the publishers and retailers give refunds on Skyrim when it literally was defective and didn’t function for thousands of users – let alone “function as advertised?”
On Peter, maybe people just cared less in the case of his games. That either speaks well of BioWare up to this point in drawing in such an invested fan base(which not feel let down) or speaks poorly of how little faith people had in Molyneux to deliver on his hype. IE, we believed BioWare, with ME3 but nobody really believed Peter.
With Skyrim, at least they tend to work to fix bugs, so even a buggy initial release will become playable. So far BioWare has outright ignored a lot of issues.
For example, the latest patch to fix the previously bugged appearance import feature didn’t work and has even made the game unplayable for some Xbox users. BioWare may be trying to fix it so the game will get past the ‘Press start to get to the menu’ loop bug, but they claiming ‘Mission accomplished’ on the still not working import feature.
On the BioWare Forums, its come to light that most of the ambient conversation in the engineering section of the Normandy are linked to Ashley’s friendship score(meaning you miss the content if you have Kaidan) and this bug may not be fixed due to cost issues.
Then there is the multiplayer. Pre release statements said you could achieve ALL single player content without multiplayer. That it would help, but not be needed. But data miners have found it to be literally impossible to unlock all SP content without MP because there are not enough war assets in the game. Bioware has yet to comment on this.
Add all that up with the day 1 DLC, the insulting PR speak, the general nosedive in quality starting with Dragon Age 2 and the general dislike for what EA stands for as noted by Azagg up a few posts… You can see why the closer some people look at this mess, the more annoyed at BioWare people get.
Given the fact that BioWare, while misleading the fan base, managed to collect an average of over $200 per user over the course of the trilogy (don’t forget the money spent on the DLCs), the claims by anyone that state things like “People need to get over themselves…It’s just a damn game” hint on severe ignorance.
If BioWare gets away with this, then I’d like to reserve the legal right for each dissatisfied Mass Effect gamer to waltz out of their chosen retail shop to with a few hundred bucks worth of unpaid BioWare merchandise under their shoulders and then tell the authorities to “get over it…It’s just a game.”
But until such time when “just a game” is not sucking money off my credit card, I expect also to not be mislead by false advertising.