Sega forced to admit wrongdoing in Alien: Colonial Marines advertising

When Aliens: Colonial Marines came out earlier this year, we weren’t alone in wondering how a game that showed such promise in early previews could turn out to be such a badly designed, buggy piece of trash upon its final release. After fielding a number of similar complaints about the advertisements for the game, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority managed to do something about the discrepancy.

reddit user subpardave based his complaint to the ASA on the “in-game” and “playthrough” video footage Sega and Gearbox used in trailers for the game, which looked deceptively sharper and more polished than the actual final product. The ASA’s website lists four complaints against Sega for the issue; he apparently wasn’t alone in wondering why the ads looked so much better.

The ASA got in touch with Sega, which responded by saying that the trailers were indeed generated using early demo versions of the game, sometimes months before the final release. It seems a bit odd that an early version would actually look better than the one that was finally released, but we suspect some soft post-production video work might be to blame for at least some of the difference.

Regardless, the publisher admitted that “the trailers did not accurately reflect the final content of the game” and agreed to add a disclaimer explaining that “the trailer footage shown uses the in-game engine, and represents a work in progress.” This warning currently appears on the British version of the official Alien: Colonial Marines site but not the nearly identical US version. (The Internet can be a weird place when it comes to international law.)

For his part, subpardave seems satisfied with the response. In a reddit post, he explained he was never looking for fines or compensation, but just for Sega and Gearbox to be “held accountable for blatantly deceiving the customer… The ASA has little real power. But negative press? That does.”

Back in 2006, the ASA called out Activision for deceptive Call of Duty ads that showed pre-rendered content in place of in-game footage. In 2007, the organization banned a Burnout ad for being overly offensive and promoting antisocial driving behavior.