ASA upholds EA complaint over loot box clarity on Facebook ad

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has warned Electronic Arts (EA) that a recent advert for its Golf Clash game must not appear again in its current form after failing to adequately disclose the use of loot boxes.

The paid-for ad in question appeared on Facebook in March 2024 promoting the mobile app game by showing in-game footage of Golf Clash.

During the footage, text appeared at the bottom of the screen that read: “Includes optional in-game purchases (includes random items)”, before quickly disappearing.

A single complaint was raised to the ASA by an academic researcher in game regulation, who argued that the ad was misleading as it did not sufficiently make it clear that Golf Clash contains loot boxes.

EA responded to the complaint, insisting that the ad disclosed the game featured random-item purchasing and that the ASA’s guidance on advertising in-game purchases does not outline specific requirements when it comes to which in-game purchases are available.

EA continued, citing the guidance that states the information does not need to be prominent, but must be easy for consumers to find. 

The gaming studio added that the disclosure falls under those regulations, claiming it was clearly visible for two seconds at the beginning of the ad. It added that the font, spacing, colour, capitalisation and layout of the text were all intentionally in place to ensure the disclosure was prominent.

The ad produced was consistent with EA’s own internal practice guidance on disclosure and use of disclaimers in 2022, when the ad was created, before being updated.

EA went further and declared that the product description of Golf Clash, linked in the ad, also made clear the game contained random item purchases, in turn ensuring consumers would be aware of that fact before choosing whether to download it.

However, EA has confirmed it would review its marketing materials to ensure future disclosures were made even more prominent and to remain consistent with the CAP Code.

Despite EA’s rebuttals, the ASA has confirmed the complaint has been upheld.

The ruling from the advertising watchdog factored in that CAP Code guidance states how the presence of in-game purchasing, especially random-item purchasing, was vital to a consumer’s decision to download the game or not.

As a result, all marketers are required to ensure that advertising for any games clearly states that it contains in-game purchasing. In this instance, the text in the ad was shown in a light grey font and in front of a moving background of various clips of gameplay footage.

The ASA has made clear it made a note of the bright colours of the gameplay footage, as well as how the clips changed in rapid succession, which meant there was often more than one colour contrast between the text and the background.

The constantly changing, bright background distorted the visibility of the text disclosing in-game purchases and made it more difficult for consumers to read, in the view of the ASA. 

Alongside the aforementioned factors, the ASA also felt the text was both too small and did not feature in the ad for long enough. 

In turn, the advertising watchdog ruled that EA’s Golf Clash ad had breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising).

“Because the presentation of the text within the context of the ad overall was not presented clearly, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead consumers to the presence of loot boxes within the game, which we considered to be material information,” the ASA confirmed.

Moving forward, the governing body has made clear that EA must not allow the ad to run again in its current form and that any future Golf Clash ads must ensure any random-item purchase disclosures were “presented prominently and clearly”.