Advertising Standards Agency Criticises Sony Over Anniversary PS4 Campaign

13th May, 0 replies

Sony Computer Entertainment, PlayStation 4, PlayStation

The Advertising Standards Agency has criticised Sony's 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4 campaign, and has stated that it caused "unnecessary disappointment".

To get your hands on one of these limited edition consoles you had to quickly solve a puzzle. Once a day, the Sony and GAME Twitter accounts would send out a clue and link to the puzzle. The first 100 people to solve it were then able to splash out £399 to grab one of the consoles.

The main problem with this was that people who solved the puzzle quickly enough often shared the links and answers with friends or traders and then sold them on eBay. There was also a glitch that allowed people to skip the puzzle aspect and purchase the PlayStation straight away, although Sony apparently disqualified these customers. Finally, in the Terms and Conditions of the competition it stated that winners would be published, but they weren't.

All of this caused a massive six people to complain to the ASA, who released the following statement:

"Neither Sony nor GAME could tell whether consumers had accessed the link after having solved the clue, or having been sent the link. We considered that meant entrants who had attempted to enter by solving the clue were likely to have been disadvantaged and therefore unnecessarily disappointed.

Because, for the reasons given, the promotion had caused unnecessary disappointment, we concluded that it had not been administered fairly, and therefore that it had breached the Code.

We told Sony Computer Entertainment UK Ltd and GAME Retail Ltd to ensure that future promotions were administered fairly and avoided causing unnecessary disappointment to participants."

Source:

vgchartz.com/article/259058/advertising-standards-agency-criticises-sony-over-anniversary-playstation-4/

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