British advertising regulator opens investigation into No Man’s Sky after complaints

The Advertising Standards Authority, the British advertising regulator, has confirmed to the site Polygon that it is starting an investigation into the advertising around the game No Man’s Sky. The organization does this after complaints from users.

Several complaints have been received about misleading advertising, Polygon writes. The British regulator itself has not disclosed any details about the complaints. One of the complainants claims on Reddit to have received a response from the organization in which more details about the content of the complaints can be found. For example, these would focus on displaying the game on Steam’s Store page.

The videos and screenshots shown there would not be an accurate representation of the game. Complainants complain, for example, about the display of the user interface, the behavior and size of beasts, large space battles and the loading times. In addition, the graphics of the game in the images would not correspond to reality. The advertising supervisor would have designated both Hello Games and Valve as responsible for these expressions.

The outcome of the regulator’s investigation also has consequences for advertising for No Man’s Sky on other places than Steam, the organization writes in its reply to the complainant. This applies to all advertisements that make the same claims about the game.

Players of the game have previously complained about the communication by Hello Games. For example, after the game’s release, there was confusion about whether or not it included multiplayer elements. Later on, Sony Worldwide Studios CEO Shuhei Yoshida described No Man’s Sky’s PR strategy as “not great.”