14 DAY TRIAL // Sega has agreed to pay out the sum of $1.25 / €0.94 million in order to settle the class-action lawsuit related to the false advertisement of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
The settlement is awaiting approval for now, but if it gets cleared, then Sega will not be held liable for any further litigation.
Gamers who purchased the game before February 13, 2013, will be able to get back an amount that will not exceed the amount paid for the game, after filling out a three-question claim form. The actual amount that each customer will receive will be dependent on how many people submit claims. No money will be returned to Sega afterwards, as Polygon reports.
The developer of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Gearbox Software, has attempted to remove itself from the claim, and continues to fight on. It could be liable for further action, in spite of claiming having sunk millions of the studio's own money into the making of the first-person shooter.
The game was released in February last year, and was universally panned by both critics and gamers. There was a lot of controversy regarding the disparity between the early press demos and the quality and content of the final version of the product, which featured a lot less aliens than its title might allude to.
The controversy didn't stop there, in any case, as it emerged that TimeGate Studios, a developer which closed shortly after the game was launched, was actually in charge of "primary development" of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Sega and Gearbox were hit by a lawsuit in April 2013, claiming that both companies had falsely advertised the first-person shooter by showing misleading representations of the game at various trade shows.
Gearbox said that it would no longer take part in any negotiations last month, as it believed that Sega was the only party accountable for the game's marketing and sale, and that Gearbox had only honored the publisher's request and delivered work according to the publisher's standards.
The bad thing for Gearbox, however, is that the studio's co-founder and president, Randy Pitchford, called the demos showed at PAX and E3 "actual gameplay," in spite of the fact that the final product fail to match their visual fidelity level and AI behavior, and some levels were even outright missing from the game.
For now, attorneys for the plaintiff filed a request with the court, asking for more time to respond to Gearbox's request to have them eliminated from the lawsuit, so it is yet unclear whether the developer will be similarly liable to litigation.