I’ve been seeing a bunch of video ads on Facebook of games that are similar to Tetris. I find them mesmerizing and oddly satisfying to watch. But when I tried downloading a few of these games, they are nothing like what was shown in the ad.
I just don’t get why game developers do this. You went to the trouble of making a program to do a certain thing so you could create an ad to trick people into downloading a completely different program. Why not just create the game you figure people want to play? If you’re able to create the program to show in the ad, why not make that the game?
It’s not illegal to bend the truth, and since governments have been getting bought out by rich fucks with no ethics (or are comprised of rich fucks with no ethics by now), there is less than no incentive to enforce truth in advertising laws even where they still exist.
Especially in sectors like video games where the people getting ripped off aren’t rich themselves.
Yeah but I don’t get the purpose of lying. Why not just actually create the game they’re advertising? If they can make the ad, can’t they make the game?
Nope, the ad video is just an animation, nothing actually functions. Making a functioning game is MUCH harder to do, and requires MUCH more time and money. (Relatively speaking)
It’s the difference between creating a movie set that looks like a skyscraper vs. creating an actual skyscraper. Creating a mock up of something is always going to be much cheaper and easier than building the actual real thing
In this atmosphere they can absolutely get away with it because there are so many bigger problems that aren’t even getting attention.
I’d like to reference the gift card scam so many people dealt with in the early 2000s. You buy a gift card at a store with real, cold hard cash and it would expire after 6 months-2 years. No matter how much was on that gift card, it was null and void after a finite amount of time.
Legislation finally went through after way too long, and finally businesses had to honor gift cards for a much longer period of time.
I’d love to think one day they’d put a kebosh on advertising like this but unfortunately I’m very certain it will go on un-addressed for far too long. Our current society favors caveat emptor over caveat venditor.