Aliens Now Legally Requires Disclaimers on Trailers

Hopefully by now you do not need me to tell you that the recent Aliens: Colonial Marines is nowhere near as good as everyone expected it to be.  The excuses and hand-waving on Sega’s part clearly did not appease many people, certainly not with the game still selling well in spite of the rage and mass disappointment.

One disappointed gamer was not satisfied.  Redditor subpardave submitted a formal complaint to the ASA, the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency.  His stated goal was not to get fines levied or to make life difficult for Sega or Gearbox, but was out of a sense of justice.

The games industry – like any other – needs to be held accountable for blatantly deceiving the consumer. And doubly so when a wall of silence is the only response to resounding criticism for shipping a shoddy product, having shown off one with all the bells and whistles.

The ASA responded by actually acting, insisting that Sega make it clear that all trailers for the game, such as the one at the top of this article, no longer claim to use in-game footage.  Sega further agreed to add disclaimers to the trailers specifying they were made using footage from demo builds, and are not directly representative of the final product.

This is the part where we start a slow clap for subpardave and the ASA, while the game industry hopefully listens and sees that gamers have run out of patience for this kind of bullshit.