Advertising watchdog BANS four mobile game adverts for faking gameplay, including one showing zombie shooting scenes which never happen

Published 4 November 2026, 15:53

• The Advertising Standards Authority ruled a Farm Heroes Saga advert faked a saw creeping towards a helpless cow.
• Dark War Survival adverts used slick zombie-shooting movie scenes and boasted of 'awards' that were really app-store promotions.
• That zombie digger appears only in a 60-second bonus round on four of Idle Zombie Miner's 194 mines.

Four mobile game adverts have been banned for showing fake gameplay footage that bore little resemblance to the games players would actually download, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled on 4 November 2026.

The rulings — part of a coordinated ASA investigation into misleading gameplay advertising across the mobile games sector — targeted adverts for Idle Zombie Miner: Gold Tycoon, Farm Heroes Saga, Dark War Survival and Pixel Flow!, according to the ASA's published rulings.

The most striking case involved Vistrex Ltd, a Cyprus-based company, whose Facebook ad and Google Play listing for Idle Zombie Miner: Gold Tycoon showed a zombie driving an excavator across a large open-world map, with a caption reading "Dig Mines Merge Zombies Gather Gold".

The real game was an idle clicking title in which players tapped to assign zombies to break rocks in mines.

Vistrex argued that "the ads were stylised rather than literal gameplay footage, but each element shown reflected a genuine in-game mechanic," pointing to a bonus stage called "Goliath the Destroyer" in which players briefly drive an excavator.

The ASA dismissed that argument, concluding that the minigame "lasted 60 seconds, was available on completion of four of 194 mines, and was not part of the core gameplay experience," and noting that it also omitted elements depicted in the advertisements, including excavator upgrades and an extensive open-world map.

The ASA concluded "the playing experience differed materially from the gameplay depicted."

King.com Ltd had one of two Facebook ads for its match-three puzzle game Farm Heroes Saga banned.

The offending ad showed matching icons causing nails to fall and a saw to creep toward a cow — dramatic jeopardy that did not exist in the actual game.

King.com argued the cow, saw and falling nails "were intended as fictional, creative additions to convey pace and urgency," and that a disclaimer alternating between "Not in-game footage" and "Not actual gameplay" made the creative nature clear.

The ASA disagreed, finding those elements "were not incidental visual details" but "created the objective and jeopardy around which the match-three sequence was presented," and that the disclaimer "was unlikely to alter that understanding and was likely to contradict, rather than clarify, how consumers would understand the game."

Three Google ads for Dark War Survival, made by Omnilojo Pte Ltd, used slick cinematic sequences — including a woman introducing her boyfriend to her parents, a zombie-filled train carriage, and a third-person character looting shops and shooting zombies — none of which reflected the game's actual base-building mechanics.

Omnilojo itself acknowledged "the ads could have done more to distinguish between those world-building sequences and the game's core interactive gameplay features."

The ASA found the ads "exaggerated both the range and nature of the gameplay available in Dark War Survival and the visual quality consumers could expect during play."

Scopely Inc had one of two Facebook ads for Pixel Flow! banned after it opened with a pipe-connecting path puzzle — a hand icon rotating path pieces to guide cartoon pigs across a river — that did not exist in the game at all.

The ASA found "consumers were likely to understand the path puzzle and the pixel art puzzle as two elements of the gameplay experience being advertised," when the game contained only a single conveyor-belt pixel-art mechanic.

All banned ads were ordered not to appear again in their current form.