Ad description
A website, www.steampowered.com, for a digital game store promoting a game. It featured text that stated, "Buy Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth AUTUMN SALE! Offer ends in 32:10:35 -16% £29.99 £25.19".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the price reduction claim was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Valve Corporation stated that along with its Luxembourg subsidiary Valve S.A.R.L., they operated an online store called Steam, where consumers could purchase computer games and other software.
Valve stated that they did not keep archives of particular web pages and referred to their sales database, which recorded their sale prices and discounts. They stated that the game was marketed at the pre-purchase price of £29.99 on 20 August 2014 and remained the same on its launch date on 23 October where Steam members were presented with an ad promoting the game. The game was later discounted during Valve's autumn sale, which commenced on 26 November. However, they had mispriced the game on several occasions within a 48-hour period along with quoting the recommended retail price (RRP) of £39.99 as the basis for making the savings claim. For the first 59 seconds of the sale, the game was priced at £23.99 and the website showed a 40% saving based on the RRP. Approximately an hour later, the game was priced at £17.99 and the website quoted a 65% discount. For the remainder of an initial 48-hour "flash sale" period, the game was marketed at £20.99 with a 30% discount based on the retail price of £29.99, which was then subsequently amended to £25.19 with a 16% discount being quoted.
Valve stated that after the autumn sale the game returned to its regular price of £29.99, which they stated was their current price for the product.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA acknowledged that Valve had marketed the game at the price of £29.99 until their autumn sale, where they had mispriced the game on several occasions and incorrectly based the discount on the RRP. Furthermore, we noted that Valve had stated that the game returned to its regular price of £29.99 after the promotion and we acknowledged that the product was currently being sold at that price on the Steam website. However, because we had not seen any robust documentary evidence to show that the game had been sold at the higher price from the pre-purchase period until Valve's autumn sale, or that it immediately reverted to the higher price after the promotion, we concluded that the claim of such a price reduction available for a limited time was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. (Misleading Advertising) and 3.7 3.7 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation. (Substantiation).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Valve Corporation to ensure that prices used as the basis of savings claims reflected the normal selling price for the product, not to imply that a product would revert to a higher price if that was not the case and to ensure that any percentage claims used were accurate.
