United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled regarding No Man’s Sky.

Hello Games’ product fell into the ASA’s scope in September. The developer told the organization that each user’s experience would be different, and recreating the scenes seen in advertisements would be difficult.

ASA noted that the graphic level used in the advertisement is lower than what the game can do and that Hello Games wanted to represent the graphical quality of an average player. With the factions and the territorial wars between them, „Hello Games said that this was part of the story or narrative of the game and manifested itself through the player’s journey and interactions with three factions during gameplay.”

The decision? Hello Games is innocent, although ASA pointed out a few differences. The AI was different in the final game than in the ad, but the noted scene wasn’t seen for too long to be labeled as misleading. The large-scale space battles were also different: „we considered that the ad did not depict gameplay that differed materially from the footage provided by Hello Games, and that it was, therefore, unlikely to mislead.”

(Source: MCV)