ASA Adjudication on EA Dungeon Keeper

http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2014/7/Electronic-Arts-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_258907.aspx#.U7cpMnu9LTo

by DanBC • 12 years ago

156 68 12 years ago

asa.org.uk

DanBC3• 12 years ago

The Advertising Standards Agency is the English regulator for advertising.

This case is about EA advertising Dungeon Keeper as free to play without being clear about IAP.

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Electronic Arts Ltd to ensure that future ads made clear the limitations of free gameplay and role of in-app purchasing with regard to speeding up gameplay.

MBCook• 12 years ago

This game is especially egregious. There is a great video [1] on YouTube where a guy known as NerdCubed talks about the 'game' for almost 10 minutes (and lots of cursing).

In the game you have to dig out squares of terrain. Terrain squares can take 24 hours to dig out. It costs about $2.50 to dig out a single square. If you buy the largest IAP it's only about $2 per square.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdoBwezFVA

wbillingsley• 12 years ago

The ASA is an industry body -- it's not a government regulator. Which gives it much greater freedom to rule on this. (It's harder to sue, as it's a body that the industry signs up to in order to protect the reputation of the advertising industry in the UK.)

DanBC3• 12 years ago

Sorry for the late reply.

The ASA is an industry body -- it's not a government regulator.

I was surprised by this. I thought they were a stronger regulator. But a simple bit of reading of their website shows that while they have some teeth for broadcast adverts (because they cooperate with OFCOM and various Trading Standards organisations) they lack teeth for anything else, even though they claim to cover online ads. Thus, they have a list of non-compliant websites who continue to make misleading claims.

Thank you for pointing that out!

kabdib• 12 years ago

Wonder how much money EA is making off of Dungeon Keeper now.

They could do worse than to NOT change the ads, but update the game so that it's actually free to play. "Sorry people, we screwed up. Here, have a game. We won't do that again."

But EA, being EA, would never do that.

tormeh• 12 years ago

Games with in-app purchases are the single mobile app category making the most money. Why would you think Dungeon Keeper is doing badly? If it is, it's probably because it's to complex to play on the bus or something.

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

Nice to see sanity once in a while.

When did gaming become a chore? I know it has been asked to death, but I cannot for the life of me figure this disgusting logic out: People play a game that is not enjoyable, and then pay extra to skip the unenjoyable parts and basically win the game, henceforth skipping the enjoyable parts of the game along with it!

It's disgusting. A money grab, pure and simple. You shoot people who don't know better, then sell them the bandaids at premium prices. In this process, you add zero value. You trap people who are likely to be trapped (most often parents of the healthy non-helicopter kind) and squeeze them. This money at the end of the chain most often comes off our various governments as these people end up running into debt.

There is nothing that describes this better as the words "predatory behaviour".

fidotron2• 12 years ago

You're dangerously close to making the leap I made a while ago which is horrifically un-PC. I'm going to say this and hope HN can appreciate the point of view even if they don't agree.

A fundamental problem with wealth redistribution as practised by governments (and credit card companies) is it makes the easiest route to riches taking advantage of people of . . . not necessarily the greatest ability to manage their finances responsibly. This means an enormous proportion of the smartest people in the western world are engaged in attempting to extract cash from people they are essentially exploiting, which ends up costing society as a whole since those people should be actively employed doing things which are more valuable.

You can't regulate taking advantage of stupidity out of the market, so the only answer is to come up with a redistribution mechanism that doesn't create such giant holes.

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

You can't regulate taking advantage of stupidity out of the market, so the only answer is to come up with a redistribution mechanism that doesn't create such giant holes.

But what do you propose for that? Because in the world we live in, all attempts at some form of "wealth equality" led to either disaster or technological crippling.

Maybe there's an ideal solution. It's probably something you could even prove mathematically. But even then, it is not a solution that will happen in at least several generations; and in the mean time, behaviour like EA's is doing nothing but steal opportunities (when you indebt someone, you can ruin or severely cripple their entire life and sometimes their families') in order to pay for the CEOs' jacuzzis.

Iftheshoefits• 12 years ago

What does the in-app purchase mechanism in any app have to do with wealth redistribution?

djmdjm• 12 years ago

Wealth redistribution as practiced through government doesn't hands giant wads of cash over to poor people that lay around waiting to be targetted by scammers. The redistrubtive mechanisms are almost always free or heavily subsidised services - education, health care, etc.

logicchains2• 12 years ago

A better system might be mandated savings. This is not redistribution, so the only cost is enforcing the scheme. Australia has this in the form of compulsory superannuation, and Singapore has it in the form of the Central Provident Fund. This prevents people with poor self control from squandering all their income. It also contributes to overall economic growth, by increasing the national savings rate and hence increasing the amount that can be invested.

Note that the American Social Security system is not a mandatory savings scheme. The money paid into it is not necessarily saved/invested, and can in fact be spent by the government however it wishes. The amount of money a person receives back from the scheme is also not proportional to the amount they paid in.

blazespin• 12 years ago

The problem is those people are often so focused on actually creating real value: professors, doctors, etc. All well known to be lousy at managing their finances. The system rewards those who are spending their time creating NO value taking advantage of those who are so busy creating REAL value. Obviously this has completely gone beyond the scope of this ASA, but it's a fundamental truth about the finance industry.

msh• 12 years ago

You can't regulate taking advantage of stupidity out of the market

While you are right that it cant be prevented, it can be made a lot harder using regulation (starting by having strict verifiable truth requirements in advertising and marketing).

pling3• 12 years ago

Spot on.

I did a contract a few years ago for a startup 'gaming' company. They were extracting cash out of people for plays in their games I.e. you buy credit and throw that into nonrefundable plays. In the end if you built up enough virtual credits, you could trade them for expensive consumer electronics.

I was hired to fix their infrastructure.

Well it turns out most of their infrastructure was used to create fake players that these people were pitted against. The odds were fixed and the fake players win nearly every time. Occasionally they'd send someone a MacBook or something by pulling a number from a hat. They were fixed so short term wins were possible but it tailed off in the form 1-e^x.

So basically they were forcing people to toil with no return.

This crossed my ethical limit, so I reported this to ASA (Im in the UK too) and trading standards and immediately quit. The company scurried away with no one ever to be seen again. Turns out their op was running from Gibraltar and everyone was dodgy.

A couple of weeks later I got a narky letter threatening to sue me big time, so I wrote a 'fuck you assholes' reply and folded my limited company and started another one.

If any of the assholes, and you know who you are, are reading this, I'm still armed to deal with your shit.

adwf• 12 years ago

I sometimes think of comparing it to a kind of voluntary Stockholm syndrome [1]. The important point to note from the wiki is the mistaking of "lack of abuse" as an act of kindness.

To elaborate: The customer is attracted by the "free" game and how fun it looks. They are then kidnapped by the addictiveness of the initial gameplay - before any significant payment is required. Then they are tortured with the unenjoyable misery of the free grind; Usually whilst they are reminded of how much better their friends are getting on in the game (yay social networking!).

But they are told they can pay to skip the bad parts. This is where I compare it to Stockholm syndrome: They are confusing relief from abuse with an act of kindness. They feel the same relative bump in happiness, but mistake it for feeling good, when it's actually closer to relief from harm.

And of course, much like Stockholm syndrome, they don't even realise quite how much they've been suckered in. They just think "that was fun" - or in the case of the real syndrome, "they were justified" - rather than realise they've just had thousands of dollars extracted from them while they were held captive...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

EDIT: I realise this may be a bit offensive to those of you who work in the free-to-play industry. But as a gamer, I really do wish the industry wasn't trending this way. What's wrong with paying up front? I'll happily pay large sums of money for a game + expansions. But try and nickle-and-dime me and it ruins the whole experience.

zobzu• 12 years ago

ive a much easier analogy.

we'll let you start a shop. then at some point we'll ask you protection taxes. if you dont pay we'll make sure to make your life hell. You can also choose to close the shop of course, and change city/country. nobody's forcing you.

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Many, many games follow this same pattern - start out relatively fun and reasonable, quickly devolve into a number decrementing simulator; a timer-fest designed to annoy the player into coughing up money to make any meaningful progress.

Clash of Clans is the one that's at the top of the free charts right now, and its entire mechanic is based around this.

Perhaps the "free-to-play industry" needs some offending. Their entire business model is exploiting vulnerabilities in the human decision making process. It's exploitative and rotten.

I remember honest games. I want those back. Now even some paid games are infected with this F2P schlock.

sbov• 12 years ago

You must not play MMOs. Gaming is almost always a chore in them.

I wonder how much of this finding against EA is because the time limit is a completely artificial game mechanic. E.g. Everquest is free to play now, but you can also use real money to buy points to instantly level a character to 85. However, the act of leveling up a character is pretty much set in stone for RPGs for 40 years now.

In original Everquest, leveling was definitely a rough chore. But what is too chore-like? Back then it took me like 20 days of playing time to hit max level for the first time. A lot of people played through it, but most didn't. It was slow and painful. Back then, you couldn't pay to bypass it (it also wasn't free to play, but if it were) - does it become a problem the minute you allow people to buy things? Whose bar for too chore-like are we using?

I've played some MMOs where there were some very highly set limits you could only bypass via buying things with real money. However, they were transferrable, and players created their own market. All the most powerful players never paid real money. Instead, they could collect resources so fast they exchanged those resources for these items. Can we call this game free?

timdorr• 12 years ago

I think the big difference is you must play the game in those MMOs to complete those chores. In these F2P mobile games, you have to simply wait some amount of time without playing the game to complete the chore.

Presumably, the MMO gameplay mechanics are sufficiently fun and engaging to keep you playing. The F2P game just wants to keep you paying.

scrollaway3• 12 years ago

I'm a big mmo player, fwiw. And it's part of what got me to the conclusion that gaming has become a chore.

The devs behind World of Warcraft have spent a lot of time trying to balance "grind" with "skipping grind". Making it easier to skip the "un-fun" parts of the game; all that assuming that the un-fun parts of the game are necessary to begin with.

However, here we're just talking about game design. In the case of P2W moneygrabs, we're talking about evil behaviour.

jquery• 12 years ago

People play a game that is not enjoyable

You are begging the question here, from which you derive your predetermined conclusion.

vacri• 12 years ago

People play a game that is not enjoyable, and then pay extra to skip the unenjoyable parts and basically win the game, henceforth skipping the enjoyable parts of the game along with it!

It's confusing because you've set up a false dichotomy. People pay money to avoid the unenjoyable parts of the game. They don't pay money to skip the fun bits - just because they pay money for assistance doesn't mean that the end credits start rolling.

It's disgusting. A money grab, pure and simple.

There's a lot of competition in games these days, and freemium is proving to be one of the tenable models. What's the difference between paying upfront and paying as you go along, anyway? As long as they game creator isn't misleading like EA was, I mean.

gcb02• 12 years ago

what's next? they will tell me I won't get a girl if I buy a bmw?

I'm pretty sure the ad told me that.

gcb02• 12 years ago

lol. 4 people that now have buyers remorse on their bmw down voted me.

johnvschmitt• 12 years ago

With millions of games released, we've essentially been conducting a wide experiment into what methods (free, IAP, free/pro) is effective (at getting in the top categories for revenue & downloads).

Now, we see that the top charts are dominated by games like this. Free, with IAP to accelerate. That's what the market evolution bore.

If we don't like it, we can try to ban practices, but unless Apple (as a gatekeeper) bans these things, they will persist, as that's what millions of apps across billions of downloads/players have evolved to, & will evolve back to.

To change the dominant business model, we'd need some new mechanic to supplant it, not just trying to tilt at windmills & complain.

TheSpiceIsLife• 12 years ago

Yep. Liberal helpings of "if you don't like it don't p(l)ay it" should be applied here. No body is forcing anybody to p(l)ay. There will be a few very vocal people complain about the model, and then there will the be balance sheet. Which speaks louder?

To change the dominant business model, you need to come up with a new model that generates more profit. That is exactly what has happened here.

A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. I'm less concerned about expensive IAP than I am about the people who pay for them. But then I think: So what? People will pay too much for all sorts of things. Who am I to judge.

drdaeman• 12 years ago

<rant>

I'm willing to pay for a good games that don't annoy me asking for more money, but see almost nothing to pay for. (I'm only talking about mobile here, desktop games market is totally different.)

That is, when I got bored I had browsed Play Market for a while and I'd say - subjectively - options where you buy a game and that's it - you enjoy the whole thing, as advertised, right to a solid logical ending, without anyone persistently asking you to take your wallet out again (to remove ads, to buy some in-game advantage or to access further gameplay) are astonishingly rare.

Crap, even Baldur's Gate is now with in-app purchases and DLCs. (But, again, not on desktop!) Guess, that must be something related to stereotypes and cliches, not real business models.

</rant>

watwut• 12 years ago

They are not trying to change the dominant business model nor ban IAP.

They ruled that if you make a game like Dungeon Keeper, then you can not advertise the game as free, because it is misleading to customer. EA has to make one minor change in like three words in that ad in order to comply. E.g. all they have to do is to change "free to download and play" into "free to download and try".

crazy1van• 12 years ago

Time for EA to put a fast talking voiceover and some tiny text at the end of the ad.

In my opinion, rulings like this will only lead to minimum required compliance. A lack of paying customers will lead to real behavior changes.

funkyy• 12 years ago

The business model is not bad. Its the greed of those companies and CEOs that are hurting the business. I think they watched to much Gordon Gekko movies when they were young and they still believe in his strategy like its a fast track to fame and glory.

SippinLean• 12 years ago

This wouldn't be such a travesty if the original Dungeon Keeper wasn't so much fun. There are plenty of play to win games out now, but rarely do they disgrace the legacy of a game like this.

stonewhite• 12 years ago

Except EA is really notorious for desecrating whatever franchises they have. They fund a game/chore like Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, yet Warhammer: Age of Heroes shuts down in a very short time.

nasmorn• 12 years ago

Free room in Hotel California. In the morning the normal exit is closed but you can leave free of charge through the complementary layrinth. At some dead ends there are credit card terminals where you can pay to have a door open.

mcintyre1994• 12 years ago

I'm interested in EA's claim that data for mid and late game players showed "non-spenders did not reach these points substantially slower than spenders" given that the entire judgement seems to suggest it'd be impossible to progress remotely quickly. How could they have that data, assuming it's not possible to just make up data and have the ASA ignore that, and how come it was never discussed in the upholding?

abcd_f• 12 years ago

My kid is a non-spender. He has, maybe, 20-30 games on his iPad that are all pay-to-accelerate, so he plays them in turns and ends up playing all the time. So he makes a steady progress even with some most greedy of the games, of which DK is indeed the crown jewel.

Tepix• 12 years ago

P2A - Pay-to-accelerate - I love it!

ASA Adjudication on EA Dungeon Keeper

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