Misleading/false advertising in mobile games

Note: This page was copypasted from Crappy Games Wiki before its shutdown.

While false advertising has been an issue for mobile games for some time now, things began to get ridiculously worse in late 2018 when ads began to show content that was nothing like the actual gameplay. This type of practice is usually perpetrated by hyper-casual game developers whose games are usually simplistic and requires little to no effort to develop. In order to gain traction, they try to lie about their games' content just to generate more money from ad revenue. This problem is still continuing to this day.

Common formats of false mobile game advertisements

NOTE: The nicknames are obviously conjectural.

• Drag-and-drop tasks - False ads of this variety typically have an area such as a room in a house or an outdoor location in a poor state. A selection of items are given to fix the situation. Inevitably, an on-screen hand (the player) will flunk the task by selecting the wrong item that usually triggers an explosion or flood. This leads to the player failing with the "FAIL" text popping up shortly after.
• Extreme environment survival/"Save them" - Similar to the “drag-and-drop task” type, a variety of this format has two or one character (usually the main protagonist and another major character) trekking through an extreme environment like a desert, deserted island, or ice cap climate. Like the former type, a selection of items are given to assist them in surviving. Another variety shows a character being chased by something dangerous or encountering dangerous obstacles with the items that are yet to be chosen to let the character escape safely. The player chooses the incorrect options which ends with the characters being put in harm's way or even dying.
• Prerendered/exaggerated trailers - These type of ads will show a highly cinematic or exaggerated dramatization of the game being advertised that typically hardly reflects on what the game is actually like. One example of an exaggerated dramatization would be showing the player getting an extremely high amount of resources that cannot be obtained in such amounts via normal gameplay.
• Pin-pulling puzzles/"How to loot?" - A character is shown along with a stash of gold, a fluid substance like lava or water and occasionally a wall of spikes, all of which are separated by pin-like barriers that can be pulled on. The onscreen hand will either make the puzzle unsolvable or put the character into a situation where they are taking damage or are otherwise about to be injured or die with the character typically looking distressed or saddened and saying "What's next?".

Examples of mobile games that have engaged in false advertising

• All of Playrix's games - The more recent ads for almost all of their games (most notoriously Gardenscapes and Homescapes advertisements) typically use the "drag-and-drop tasks" and "extreme environment survival/"Save them"" formats although they sometimes dabble in other formats like "pin-pulling puzzles". The games in actuality are match-3 games instead of what’s on the advertisement (except for Township, which is a city building game).
• Hero Wars - The false ads for the game very frequently use the "How to loot?" ads often starring the main character, Galahad, and occasionally a princess named Aurora. Similar ads for the game have Aurora being shackled or tied up with a dangerous trap close by with the on-screen hand needing to rescue her. The real game is an idle RPG, but bonus levels very similar to the ads can appear after a level is completed although it seems to rarely happen.
• Hustle Castle - The ads literally utilise sexual innuendos and several pornographic tropes, in the artstyle of Seth McFarlane. The real deal is this game is a combination of idle RPG and Fallout Shelter-esque empire constructor.
• Idle Capitalist
• Klondike Adventures
• Mafia City - The false advertisements for the game (which depicts that the game is more of a GTA-styled game) especially the phrase "That's how mafia works" went to become an internet phenomenon due to it’s crude but laughable nature. The real game is a city building and strategy game. After their ads blew up because of the memes, other developers started to copy their format.
• Matchington Mansion - It is also notable with the drag-and-drop task type.
• Project Makeover
• Sweet House
• Words Story - Most of the ads use an artstyle that copies the artstyle of Cyanide and Happiness and show words being spelled or other puzzles being solved to give items to a prisoner to help them escape from prison. While word spelling and a prison setting are parts of the real game, the gameplay consists solely of word spelling puzzles that have little or no impact on the story. Even the art style of the game has a generic stick figure style rather than the plagiarized one used in the advertising. If we’re speaking of the story, then what it is basically resembles The Shawshank Redemption Lite.
• Bob's World Super Run - A Super Mario rip-off infamous for spamming ads 24/7 which include random gameplay clips of Super Mario and not advertising the game. Once, they shamelessly showed an ad which was basically a Level Up video. How come the developers of that game haven’t been sued yet from this? Not to mention some of them also used the "pin-pulling puzzles" format.
• DAFU Casino and many other slots games - The ads claim the game is better than real casinos and make it seem like you are always very likely to win a lot of real money. They often also include very obviously and poorly staged reactions from people who "won". However, you don't actually win real money in the games.
• Factory Inc. - becoming infamous for spamming ads 24/7 which include random clips of hydraulic pressing and/or Noob vs. Pro ads and not advertising the game. Once, they shamelessly showed an ad which was basically a Hydraulic Press Channel video, and yet they haven’t been sued either. To make matters worse, another ad for the game stole footage from a BeamNG.drive gameplay.
• Match Masters
• Kiss of War - The game's ads are infamous for objectifying woman and even sexualizing them. The ads depict their buttocks (and sometimes breasts) shaking slightly as well as attempting to replicate the Mafia City ads by adding similar clichés to the ads. The actual game is more of a generic shooter with the "jiggle physics" being absent.
• Evertale: The advertisements for this game show that the game was gonna be a dark, gritty and gory Pokémon RPG game, but that is never the actual game. Instead, it’s just a generic waifu Gacha game with no substance or horror elements added whatsoever.
• Lily's Garden - The ads are completely extinct from the game to the point where one believes that they're movie snippets.
• Idle Tycoon games - Most of the ads feature adding facilities to help the civilians, which has nothing to do with the gameplay itself

Why This Practice Has 💩 IQ

1. First of all, they spend more time on making ads than developing the actual game. One of the most important mechanics in these ads are the animation (which is the main part of the ad). Ironically, animations are also a core staple in games and games do not work without them. They might as well have put their time making animations for the actual game instead of the ad. In fact, they spend more time on marketing than development and pump almost all of their budget into that.
   • To rub the salt into the wound, the ads are sometimes rendered in a game engine like Unity or Unreal.
   • Some YouTube commenters even said that many of these games are only made to capitalise (and focus) on advertisements.
2. Plus, their animations are likely rushed out as the footage has several errors like mesh flickering or lack of post processing. This is common in the Mafia City ads.
3. Most obviously, they tend to completely lie about the content of their games. You could get an ad that looks like an intense game where the safety and well-being of the world depends upon your actions while the actual game is the everyday tile-matching game. In fact, it even makes Ubisoft look tolerable.
   • Even if they get praised for their ads, they do absolutely NOTHING to improve the game and turn it into a replica of the ad.
   • Because these ads generate controversy and many YouTubers talk about how fake they are, this causes their ads to gain traction, and make them money. In other words, they're capitalizing on their ads' controversy for profit, which causes them to make even more fake ads and other developers to follow suit.
4. Many false mobile game ads are highly repetitive and can easily be summed up as "Incompetent moron doesn't know what they're doing and screws everything up for the characters". The constant, and almost intentional, screwups by the on-screen hand and the "FAIL" text popping up can also become infuriatingly irritating. Additionally, many of the "drag-and-drop tasks" ads typically end with destructions, like explosions, freezing, or floods.
   • Sometimes, the hand is even set up to fail the task at hand, as either none of the given items are the correct solution to the problem or an item that should solve the problem doesn't solve the problem at all.
5. Most ads feature pointless characters who do not appear normally in-game, like the humans from Dragon Farm Adventure, the buff man in Family Farm Adventure, etc.
   • Speaking of which, most of the pointless characters are mean-spirited to the point they torture the main characters, for nothing.
6. When it comes to the "I can't reach pink color" type of ads, most ads do not have any pink on them. However, when there is a sign of pink, the ad shows that you are either painting on it, or other things that do not involve "reaching" said color. Most VOODOO games have these types of ads.
7. Some advertisers are total perverts, as they feature several sexual tropes on their ads in an attempt to lure people or even advertise thirst traps. Most of these ads feature oversexualised women and are even way too fetishy. To make matters worse, said tropes are now being incorporated into actual games, that are most of the time E-rated.
   • Some ads feature male characters having sex, even though it does not fit the E-rated theme.
8. On at least Google Play, a number of games (most notably those by Playrix) have started to put up trailer thumbnails, store page images, and even icons that misrepresent what the gameplay is actually like. This shows just how weak the quality control on the Play Store can be.
9. Many of the "drag-and-drop tasks" and "extreme environment survival/"Save them"" ads are extremely mean-spirited because of the characters constantly being put in dangerous situations and facing all sorts of distress or cruelty thanks to the scripted idiocy of the on-screen hand.
10. Some of the "drag-and-drop tasks" and "extreme environment survival/"Save them"" ads contain violence or other inappropriate content.
    • One fake Homescapes ad showed Austin the Butler with his hands and feet tied up to a bed. To make things worse, the game has an E rating on the Play Store, and last we checked, showing people tied to a bed is not exactly E-rated content.
    • Another fake ad, this time being for Matchington Mansion, showed a cat being chosen to stop a rat infestation only for the rats to put the cat in the oven and the room to go up in flames.
    • One ad for a game called Sweet House showed a cartoon woman appearing before a vacuum cleaner is used to suck up debris. It sucks up water in the process, which causes it to explode, and the woman is shown scorched and twitching a few times before going still, implying that she died.
    • A few ads also shows male members dying deep in the ocean causing their girlfriends to get worried or freak out.
11. The mean-spirited nature and violent content of some of these ads, combined with the distressed reactions of the characters, can also be upsetting to those viewing them, especially kids.
12. Some ads in the "drag-and-drop tasks" and "extreme environment survival/"Save them" format use very stiff, simplistic, and bland 2D animation.
13. Annoying sounds and music in some ads.
14. Like game ads from companies like Voodoo, some ads will contain crappy and/or clichéd phrases at the top of the screen, such as "Why is this game so hard?".
15. It has been noted that a number of false mobile game ads are very similar to one another in areas like outcomes, certain choices made by the on-screen hand, and even certain assets such as the "FAIL" text. This is more likely an animation template, but only modified by various advertisers. See the linked i3Stars video below to see for yourself.
16. Some advertisements engage in asset theft or rip off things from popular media.
    • One of the Play Store images and fake ads for Homescapes shows Austin being endangered in a room very similar to the Simpson family's living room.
    • Some ads nowadays use SpongeBob or an expy.
    • Some ads use the old version of Facebook's reaction emojis, while some use remixes of said emojis.
    • In some cases, footage is even blatantly stolen from YouTubers or even other games! One example is Bob's World stealing a Level Up parody about Mario and advertising it for their own game.
    • Two ads for Fishdom show a regal blue tang accompanying the clownfish in the ads. Sounds familiar?
    • Some ads even use popular sound effects and even popular music, even if it is copyright protected.
    • Some of the Project Makeover and Matchington Mansion ads steal the angry Witch sounds from Left 4 Dead 2.
    • The fact that Hustle Castle's artstyle copies the artstyle of Seth MacFarlane's shows enough as is, but one ad for the game shows a king character impregnating Lois Griffin from Family Guy, Marge Simpson from The Simpsons, and Turanga Leela from Futurama. And what does this have to do with the gameplay?
      • Since 20th Century Studios (or 20th Century Fox for those who still call it that) is now a Disney subsidiary, that technically makes them Disney characters, potentially making them a target for Disney's copyright enforcement.
    • The Mafia City ads are the worst, as the characters in the ads are stolen from various games. Some of them include Sam Fisher from Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (especially his Double Agent model), Buck Hughes from Far Cry 3, and even Alyx, Odessa, and Father Giorgio from Half Life 2. As if that's not enough, the vehicles are stolen from various CG sites like VizPeople and Evermotion, as well as a low-res ripped portion of GTA IV's map. The ads also use stolen YouTube videos, such as the dog digging the sand.
    • Some ads use infamous world leaders like Kim Jong-un or Adolf Hitler.
17. Recently, some false ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes have the disclaimer "Not all images represent actual gameplay", likely to try and avoid facing scrutiny or criticism for their deceptive nature. Unfortunately, in Playrix's case, this backfired (See trivia).
18. Some ads will either use real-time people (especially Caucasians or celebrities) to promote the game or use pre-recordings of people playing on their cellphone. The acting comes off as over-the-top, awkward, and forced. This is especially evident in Evony: The King's Return ads. The editing is also unsurprisingly bad, this ad in particular doesn't even attempt to sync the man's voice with his video clip. Also unsurprisingly, the players fail every single time.
19. Speaking of Evony, the fake ads are bad enough on their own, but the most infuriating thing is that they have the audacity to expose fake ads while using fake gameplay footage as the person "plays." Moreover, these ads will have the person say "but guys I've finally found the game!"
20. Even if the game itself is good, it gets ruined by these ads and breeds a group of haters.
21. The advertisers cannot take criticism at all, as one of them attempted to blackmail i3Stars after the latter compared their game to the ads. The advertiser also claimed that i3Stars' video on them "damages their reputation" and that he should take down the video or they will "take legal actions" against him. Fortunately, i3Stars denied to do so.
22. It ruins the reputation of both the game and its developers, as they will be remembered for their false ads even if the game is good. Playrix is a major example of this.

Redeeming Qualities

1. A developer made a game based solely on those faked ads named Hero Rescue, which has positive reviews.
2. Some of the games aforementioned have improved their gameplay somewhat. Games like Fishdom have actually added the misleading gameplay in a form of minigames such as "Pull the Pin." But it doesn't help the fact that there are still LOADS of fake ads and stolen assets that plague and ruin the game as a whole.

Trivia

• Misleading Homescapes and Gardenscapes ads were banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after 7 complaints from people who believed the ads were misleading. Even though they said "Not all images represent actual gameplay" in fine print, the ASA sided with the complainants, and told Playrix to stop using such ads.
• A subreddit known as r/shittymobilegameads was created after the rise of these ads and is used to show how sleazy mobile game ads are.
• German YouTuber i3Stars usually downloads these games and compares it to the ads to warn his fans and other people about the evil practice.

See also

• False advertising in games

Comments

Loading comments...