Cornflakes_91 wrote:The thing that hello games obviously lied about and for what they should be prosecuted are all the differences in kind they promised/showed in their staged demos.
The big ass sandworms for example, or the "fleet battles" they promised and showed etc etc.
That was blatant lying and its far from being good for the community that they get away with it.
The problem with this argument, which you're far from alone in making, is that it completely ignores any responsibility on the part of consumers to do some research before throwing money at a product.
That is not a defense of deliberate deception. It's a statement that responsibility for economic activity cannot all be loaded onto one side. Responsibility must be shared between producers and consumers or the whole system fails.
And where shared responsibility kicks in is not some easily-discernable bright line as you imply, either. Is there hard evidence that Hello Games's principals conspired to defraud consumers? No. There is not. There's a discrepancy between advertising materials and the early versions of a game. Some people are choosing to express an opinion that this must be deliberate fraud. Others have a different opinion.
I don't have an opinion on that. I have, and expressed, an opinion that if the ASA had declared certainty of fraud in the absence of hard evidence (and with no consideration of consumer responsibility), it would have sent a clear message to all developers of games with procedural content generation that they're asking for a lawsuit. RIP, PCG.
That would be bad.
