The Advertising Standards Agency is the English regulator for advertising.
This case is about EA advertising Dungeon Keeper as free to play without being clear about IAP.
> The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Electronic Arts Ltd to ensure that future ads made clear the limitations of free gameplay and role of in-app purchasing with regard to speeding up gameplay.
This game is especially egregious. There is a great video [1] on YouTube where a guy known as NerdCubed talks about the 'game' for almost 10 minutes (and lots of cursing).
In the game you have to dig out squares of terrain. Terrain squares can take 24 hours to dig out. It costs about $2.50 to dig out a single square. If you buy the largest IAP it's only about $2 per square.
The ASA is an industry body -- it's not a government regulator. Which gives it much greater freedom to rule on this. (It's harder to sue, as it's a body that the industry signs up to in order to protect the reputation of the advertising industry in the UK.)
> The ASA is an industry body -- it's not a government regulator.
I was surprised by this. I thought they were a stronger regulator. But a simple bit of reading of their website shows that while they have some teeth for broadcast adverts (because they cooperate with OFCOM and various Trading Standards organisations) they lack teeth for anything else, even though they claim to cover online ads. Thus, they have a list of non-compliant websites who continue to make misleading claims.
This case is about EA advertising Dungeon Keeper as free to play without being clear about IAP.
> The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Electronic Arts Ltd to ensure that future ads made clear the limitations of free gameplay and role of in-app purchasing with regard to speeding up gameplay.