Sega to pay $1.25 mil for Colonial Marines false advertising

http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/11/5993509/aliens-colonial-marines-class-action-settlement

Sega has chosen to try and settle the class action lawsuit against them concerning the false advertising surrounding last year's quite terrible Aliens Colonial Marines, by paying 1.25 million dollars. The false advertising claim concerned the use during marketing of footage and screenshots from a build of the game that had nothing to do with the final product.It is still unclear whether developer Gearbox, who instead chose to maintain their innocence of the facts, will also be held accountable or if the charges against them will be dropped.

I have to say, this pleases me. This may finally get us closer to the end of the so-called "bullshots" epidemic, that is to say promotional material not representative of the visual quality of the final product, which are extremely common in this industry.

Of course Sega did much worse than just that, by showing promotional material that flat out lied about what the the game was like in substance, but here's hoping this will show companies that they can be held accountable for their lies, big or small as they may be.

I think Gearbox is partially at fault, whether they want to admit it or not. They should have been more open during the development with the publisher and told them more forcefully that they couldn't reach the deadline and it should be delayed in order to achieve that.

Whether they funneled money away to improve Borderlands 2 is just a conspiracy.

I think this hurts Gearbox' long term projects with publishers either way.

Sega should sue Gearbox for this! There the ones that stole the money from Aliens and used it to make Borderlands 2!

Justice served.

The way I see it, there could have been three ways this might have gone:

1) Sega was behind the fake trailers and passed them down to Pitchford to promote, in which case Gearbox would be partially excusable.

2) Gearbox was lying to Sega about the quality of the game, in which case Sega is really the worst publisher ever seen in the history of gaming.

3) They were in cahoots about it (most likely option).

In any case, let the hammer fall where it must. Someone lied and lied hardcore.

Great. Next up, FROM Software.

I'm really glad to see someone actually pay for this.

This is the game that made me stop pre-ordering. It actually made me paranoid that I was going to get ripped off again. I missed out on some great pre-order bonus' and collector editions (bioshick infinite is the one that most sticks out in my mind)

This is something that should set a precedent for the entire video game industry and possibly the film industry (I am looking at you, The Amazing Spiderman 2 trailer). Honesty builds character and earns respect which is good for business.

@MirkoS77: From Software openly admitted that they decreased the graphical quality of Dark Souls 2 in order to get the game to run smoothly. In their words, it was "Unplayable and broken" before the downgrade. Here's a link to the admission. I personally prefer this, as I would much rather play a game with a smooth framerate as opposed to one that looks prettier and has a choppy framerate. And even so, the PC version has a higher graphics fidelity, if you really do care.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/03/20/dark-souls-ii-was-unplayable-and-broken-on-consoles-before-graphics-downgrade/