Aliens: Colonial Marines trailers found misleading by UK agency

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Sega will add disclaimers to promotional materials

Aliens: Colonial Marines' infamously optimistic trailers will get a touch of reality thanks to one angry U.K. customer. The Reddit user, who goes by subpardave, sent a complaint to the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Agency about the difference in visual quality between the pre-release videos and the game itself.

The UK version of the game's promotional site now states that "the trailer footage shown uses the in-game engine, and represents a work in progress," though the videos themselves are unaltered for now.

Adding a disclaimer to Colonial Marines' website and videos that the footage depicts an in-progress version may not live up to your definition of accountability, but the ASA did side with the consumer on this one.

"Sega Europe understood the objections raised about the quality of the game in relation to the trailers, but explained that they weren't aware of these issues when the trailers were produced, in some cases several months before release," the ASA wrote in response to subpardave's complaint, evidently one of four informally resolved against Sega on March 27.

"We consider that with this disclaimer in place, customers are unlikely to get the impression that the trailer shows the finished product and the ads are therefore unlikely to mislead."

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.