Ads ruled misleading for hiding loot boxes

These games are not accused of faking their gameplay. Their ads showed the game. What they left out was that the game sells random items, and a UK regulator has held that this omission makes an ad misleading.

Three things this group establishes, and they apply well beyond the titles listed here. Silence counts: an ad for a game containing loot boxes must say so. Bad disclosure counts as no disclosure: light grey text on a moving background, on screen for two seconds, was ruled insufficient. And a store listing is an advertisement: the ASA ruled on app store pages, not just video ads, which means the page you land on after clicking is held to the same standard as the ad that sent you there.

Worth noticing who is here. Licensed racing titles, a mainstream pool game, a golf simulator from a major publisher. Not a pin-pulling ad among them. This failure mode is not confined to the studios with the worst reputations, and almost every ruling in this group traces back to complaints from a single academic researcher in game regulation.