The ASA wasn’t happy with Sony’s Anniversary PS4 contest

It seems that a few people were unhappy with the way Sony and UK retailer, GAME, handled the UK 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4 contest. The promotion took place late last year and was designed in an attempt to reward ‘loyal fans' by giving them the one off chance to buy a 20th anniversary edition PS4.

However, things did not really go according to plan as people swiftly figured out how to cheat the system. Following that, six people contacted the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) complaining that the competition was in-fact unfair and Sony broke its own terms and conditions.

The 100 PS4 winners were never disclosed, which was against the competition's own terms and conditions. In addition, while GAME tried to disqualify entrants that it suspected of cheating or playing unfairly, the retailer admitted that it received an “unexpectedly high volume of entries”, which led to complications such as five people being picked for the chance to buy the same PS4 and I doubt that any of them would have wanted to share the console.

The ASA went on to say that the contest caused “unnecessary disappointment” and branded it as unfair. Sony and GAME were then told to ensure that future promotions were not handled this badly in the future.

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KitGuru Says: The ASA's statement really boiled down to ‘don't let this happen again'. I can see how the contest could be considered unfair though, people cheated the system from day one and the whole thing was handled quite badly. 

Source: Eurogamer

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