Deceptive Advertising – MMO Fallout

Just when you thought Bethesda was going to take home the trophy for 2019’s “stupid and greedy” decision, Cryptic Studios rolls in and says “we can do it better, and possibly commit fraud in the process!”

This weekend saw the launch of the Mudd Market in Star Trek Online, a feature that by all means should be seen as a good thing. Its purpose after all is to sell items that have been previously unobtainable for a very long time. Ships, crewmates, and other items all being sold to people who have really wanted them but couldn’t get them. Simple, right? Well not so much.

Cryptic decided the best course of action was to launch the shop with ridiculously egregious pricing, offering items like a combat pet for the regular cost of eight thousand Zen (that’s $80 USD) and around $140 for a ship. The items are on sale, of course, at 75% off, but even the sale prices have gone over like a lead balloon to the community, many of whom are aware that many of these items were previously given away for free.

To complicate matters, official communications from Cryptic staff indicate that these prices were meant to be a joke, as in “ha ha look how crazy that Mudd is selling his rare goods.” Unfortunately for Cryptic, while the idea of the crazy used goods salesman might make for a decent lore point, the law has something to say about deceptive advertising.

You see, in the United States and several other countries there are laws on the books that consider it fraudulent advertising when you put an item on discount but never actually sold it at the regular price or had any intention of selling it at the regular price. These cases regularly end in multi-million dollar settlements. Cryptic has attempted to walk back these claims of ‘joke’ prices by claiming that the items will indeed go to their regular listed price after the sale ends.

Disgruntled customers are encouraged to air their grievances to CBS (who own Star Trek) directly via their compliance line by phone or by email. Complaints regarding deceptive advertising can be made to the Federal Trade Commission, your Attorneys General, or for those living outside the United States your equivalent consumer protection bureau.

Source: MassivelyOP via Reddit

I don’t normally report on Facebook ads since most of you likely block them anyway and I could devote an entire book to how Chinese browser games engage in blatant fraud in Facebook ads either by outright lying about their games or going as far as using screenshots/video from other titles. And since League of Angels and GTArcade aren’t above stealing in order to peddle their self-playing browser “game,” it doesn’t surprise me at all that I would see the ad above on my Facebook feed.

Yes, they actually bought the domain “amazingmmogame.com” for the purpose of this promotion. Notice that there isn’t actually any indication of what the game is. The 3d model in the image above is from a Deviant Art account and may or may not have been stolen, but since the ad edits out where the watermark is, I’m willing to guess probably not. But for now, let’s dive into this ad. Clicking the link brings you to amazingmmogame.com, and a series of questions to determine if you are right for the game.

Finally a game that gates its community. Ask away.

No. I won’t allow it.

Your players probably “feel difficult to beat lvl 3” because technically the game plays itself.

I’ve seen enough of these games to know that addicts are exactly the demographic that League of Angels targets, so yes.

Yes, but I’m willing to bet that most of the other players are not 18. For what it’s worth, I answered no to all of these questions and the game let me in anyway. So much for League of Angels being a gated community.