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Gamers enraged at Ubisoft for injecting ads into the middle of video games
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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Can we boycot the companies that do this already. I get the AC IP is nice, I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of their games.
But the ad industry is completely getting derailed. What's next ? Watch a 15s promo video every time you want to open te fridge? Watch a promo video before you can open the door?
Have your walls randomly show you ads?
Stop buying their shit. Regardless of how decent the game is. Punish them for the predatory practices. Demand refunds.
But no. People will likely be outraged, and then next game angry and then the next game they'll suck it all up and complain about the good all days.
#remindmein5years
I always thought the cyberpunk genre was a warning, not a blueprint.
Don't Create the Torment Nexus etc etc
Wow! The torment nexus is so cool! I wanna live in the torment nexus! *creates torment nexus*
I can't get into the genre, it's too real to be fun
Way ahead of you.
Yeah, unfortunately, it is hard for me to hurt their bottom line because I checked out of the series after Origins.
That said, I've never sought a refund on a digital copy of a game, but I wouldn't hesitate if I paid full price for a game only to find out there were in game ads
I got the package deal with all of them over the summer and loved origins 😅 been working my way through them all to get ready for the new one. I was thinking I'd go this route of getting it and returning if I saw ads, but based on comments about the company having rape apologists I might need to do some more research before even bothering to take that risk
Same. I checked out of the series back when they started enforcing U-Play use. I can't understand why anyone would buy any of their games. Ubisoft went mask off a long time ago.
Companies should focus on making in-game advertising appear 'diegetic' as opposed to the low hanging fruit of inserting it like a sore thumb.
Had Ubisoft scattered a number of graffiti or town criers in Odyssey's cities talking about visiting a foreign land for less money the next few days only, where the art direction looked and felt perfectly at home in the world itself and interacting with the hooks alerted users to the promotion details, this would have been way less disgusting to players.
You didn't have players revolting when Cyberpunk's 2.0 update suddenly had characters talking about Dogtown which then hooked into trying to upsell the DLC. It fit the world and was something that could be ignored or engaged with as desired.
GTA: Online's phone calls hooking into paid or new content are another example of doing it better (though their frequency is tuned really poorly).
The problem is most publishers don't want to spend the extra time and money to fit ads into the worlds players are in. Which is dumb, as testing a really terrible UX that players will revolt on and press will cover negatively is going to shoot in the foot an initiative that would have gone much smoother with a bit of elbow grease and respect for the players.
Especially with the increase in in-game commerce I expect that we will see a spike in in-game advertising over the next few years, and with advances in generative AI that might even end up being tailored to the in game world as well much more often.
But the reactivity of the audience here means that the publishers who do a good job on limiting the degree to which moving in that direction abuses the playerbase are going to end up much better off than the ones that think dumb shit like a popup ad in the game UI during play is a good idea.
Drink verification can to proceed.
There's a blackmirror episode that touches on ads invading our lives like this
Black Mirror episodes coming true or already being true is hedging into "Simpsons did it!" Territory
I'm pretty certain that I read a comment like this back in 2010 to 2012 on Reddit. Hell it may have been on Slashdot or Digg back in 2008.
As you've said, the only way to stop this is for everyone to stop feeding the beast. The problem is that F2P works now in 2023 as a business model, and clearly worked back in 2010 as DDO, and SW:TOR are still chugging along.
I don't think it is feasible to end these predatory practices unless one can manage to get every single government in the world to outlaw them. Good luck on that.
Well, for one I think we've played the sum total of what Assassin's Creed has to offer, at this point. I haven't seen Ubisoft bring anything much new or compelling to the table since... AC3? I think? I've been doing just fine without it for all these years.
IIRC there were some racing games that actually did show you real ads on billboards and pit walls and so forth, which were updated over the internet. Need For Speed: Carbon did this, I think. I'm certain there are already other similar examples, and you'll probably find them in something published by EA.
I'm all for giving the finger to the megacorporate publishers who do this, though. I have got so many fuckin' indie games in my Steam library still, many of which I haven't played much or at all, a large portion of which are great, and all of which will give me something to do other than put up with what the predatory behavior du jour is (advertisements, subscriptions, lootboxes, battle passes, microtransactions, or whatever the fuck else).
Battlefield games also had billboards. Granted they were torn up, but they were advertisements. Tbh I'm okay with ads if they fit into the game.
Have a game with a TV? I'm okay with ads getting inserted into the fake-TV programming so long as they're in the style of the game.
Have a game with billboards? Okay, but again, it needs to be in the style of the game.
I'm willing to forgive some level of advertising in games, especially if they're from smaller studios, they just need to be non-intrusive and fit the style of the game. I'm more forgiving if you've put the work and effort into making the ad look and feel like it's part of the world. An example is if GTA VI had radio ads that were self-depricating and/or self-parodies of the real-world companies advertising in-game.
There is no greater ad on the planet like the pißwasser commercial in gta4.
There is no greater ad on the planet like the pißwasser commercial in gta4.
How about the example of Transformers(2007) where GM very gently shoehorned their product into nearly every character.
This movie killed the movie theater for me, I felt like I paid to watch a commercial
Ironic, considering Transformers was literally made to sell Japanese toys.
The NHL games used to show ads on the boards too. Assuming they still do.
Didn't you guys have ads in the 20th century?
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Haven’t bought an AC since the American revolution one, last thing I bought from them was watchdogs for $5 and it was dogshit so reinforced my no Ubishit rule
I've been boycotting ubisoft, EA, blizzard, and the like for years. 🤷♂️
(I mean, technically I've been avoiding denuvo malware, microtransactions, always online DRM bullshit, and the like, plus bad and / or uninteresting games... but that's effectively equivalent to boycotting those assholes.)