People got angry about the Mass Effect 3 ending for a while, made a lot of noise, and then sort of moved on after a couple of months, but advertising regulator ASA still took heed and investigated complaints that consumers were being misled by some of the commercials for the game.
The complaint was simple: gamers had been promised that their actions would influence the outcome of Mass Effect 3, but some gamers believed that wasn’t the case. Therefore — Mass Effect 3 contained false advertising.
But the ASA has now investigated and rejected those claims.
“We considered that the three choices at the end of the game were thematically quite different,” claimed the ASA, in a recently released statement, “and that the availability and effectiveness of those choices would be directly determined by a player’s EMS score, which was calculated with reference to previous performance in the game(s).
“We also acknowledged that there appeared to be a large number of minor variations in the end stages of ME3, and that those were directly impacted by choices made by players earlier in the game(s).
“Whilst we acknowledged that the advertiser had placed particular emphasis on the role that player choices would play in determining the outcome of the game, we considered that most consumers would realise there would be a finite number of possible outcomes within the game and, because we considered that the advertiser had shown that players’ previous choices and performance would impact on the ending of the game, we concluded that the ad was not misleading.”
I would say that justice has been served, but I’m sure many will disagree with me. Thoughts?
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