I will, in turn, be very thoutful about buying any of your games.
If in-game ads become the norm, I guess I could either not play games anymore, or I could take my ship out onto the ocean.
There are more “lol fuck you” choices than there are “pretty please let me be bombarded with bullshit” options here.
There are enough games that can be enjoyed bullshit free, that you’ll never have to buy a new game again.
I guess indy devs will pop up faster than corps can buy them out and shut them down, but it’s still a depressing race to watch.
This has been the trend since early 2010. More and more games made by small companies are exploding and outselling AAA games. Stardew Valley had its all time peak 2 months ago despite being 8 years old, Dave the Diver popped off last year, Helldivers 2 broke records before Sony decided to fuck it up and subsequently get dragged through the mud, and Hades 2 is apparently awesome.
The slow death of AAA games has been great to watch. There’s so much more variety than 5 years ago and you don’t have to give your money to soulless corporations to enjoy them.
People are already paying for ads in games. Look at American/European truck simulator where you pay to have Goodyear or whatever other company on your rig.
If they do it tastefully… like a coke can in a cafeteria which would make it more realistic than a generic brand - it could work.
They’ve been doing this in movies for decades.
If it’s shit like pop ups or little red notification dots, they can go fuck themselves with a rusty screwdriver.
my ship sails the ocean because of shit like this for a while now. these people dont deserve money to nickel and dime us.
Meh, I have bought just one EA game in the last 5-6 years (NFS Heat, which was like 95% off).
More people should speak with their wallets.
“Our research shows that we can fill up to 82% of the visual field before inducing seizures!”
EA CEO password is definitely B055man69.
“You’re saying we can induce seizures in players? Quick, found a private ambulance company and make it a premium subscription, then fry everyone.”
And then we launch a municipal consulting company! with all of those new ambulances on the road, we need to get these city’s to put a $15 million dollar roundabout in every other intersection.
Ohhh so games will be cheaper because they’ll be subsidized right?.. right?..
“We’ll be very thoughtful about how to absolutely maximize our profits from this”
I mean, they’ve already been getting revenue from product placements in their sports games, many of which sell at or near AAA prices already.
To be fair, advertising in sports games is essentially expected. Advertising is all over the place in real world sports.
We all know that’s not what EA is talking about here though. They 100% are trying to figure out how to get that sort of advertising into other shit where it doesn’t fit well. You know they’d put real world ads into a single player Star Wars game right now if they could get away with it.
It’s like how product placement in movies started off super small. Now sometimes it just fucking smacks you in the face where you think is this movie legitimately just an ad?
What do you mean? Sips Corona
I was always wondering how much money shooters set in modern times like BF\COD get from weapon manufacturers and army. It’s both an ad for service and a shooting range with a touch of competition.
IIRC, the US military does not ask for much in money terms, but you can’t show it in a negative light. That’s why most games become thick with propaganda.
“Yousa enjoy Coca-Cola”
The cantina in Mos Eisley is now a Starbucks
Yes, I’m just surprised it’s taken them this long to go from ads in sports games to everywhere else
lol, that sentence was my first thought, too. Thoughtful about WHAT?
But how else can they guarantee infinite growth to their shareholders? Won’t someone please think of the poor shareholders???
EA Ads, they’re in the game!
Feel free. I stopped playing EA games and AAA titles years ago. You all enshitificated it enough as it is that I left awhile ago. Adding ads will only harden my resolve to never pick up another title.
Mostly the same, although I did break my accidental EA boycott for Titanfall 2, It Takes Two and Tales of Kenzera.
Oh no! If only there were thousands of other games I could play instead
Companies used to do this, but stopped when every game reviewer called them out on it. It was always in kinda shitty games too. You can rest assured that EA is fully capable of making shitty games with ads in them.
Head Tap Meme Can’t get called out by game reviewers if there’s no functional games media.
There’s very little decent media criticism of any kind left thanks to the ongoing media implosion, and games media is especially unprofitable.
I don’t mind it if it makes sense. Driving around in GTA if there’s a gap billboard I don’t care. I don’t want banner ads in the equipment menu though
GTA is filled with parody ads, which are actually fun content and not intended to make you buy something. The second they become real ads, you’ll have brands complaining about being displayed next to gun violence or prostitutes, and all the fun goes away.
There’s a reason there’s no real car brands in GTA, because none of them want to be associated with running down pedestrian and drive-bys
How about when they inevitably share user data with advertisers (assuming that isn’t the plan from the start)?
Loved the ones in Burnout Paradise. It had billboards for CompUSA. Which had liquidated almost all their stores shortly before the game released.
To be fair, the ads might bring a sense of pride and accomplishment to the game.
I will continue to not play EA games. Business as usual.
I’ve got a game that I purchased on Steam during a sale that sat in my backlog for a while before I went to install it. But checked the reviews again first and saw complaints about the EA launcher and realized “oh no shit, it’s a star wars game, of course that’s EA” and installed a different game instead.
I was then just tempted by a massive sale on mass effect complete edition (actual name might be wrong, but one that includes most or all of the games in one package). Like it is pretty much at the automatic buy level, but again looked at reviews and saw complaints about the EA launcher and moved on instead.
Though now I’m wondering if there’s a workaround or something to de-EA their games.
Pirate them
The games aren’t even that good that it’s worth it tho. They are like 7/10s at best and at worst… yikes.
EA ads… it’s in the game!
pure gold… do they even use that slogan any more though?
Nice
Let’s add EA to the list of companies I’m boycotting.
Oh? What a coincidence; it was already there.
removeds a Cola! The official sponsor of this refreshing boycott is proud to announce a whole new removed flavor! Try cherry removed! And the all new mango removed!
This just in…removed!.. removed is not how you pronounce it? Couck? Oh okay, I’m sorry. But how about Pecksi? Pa pa pa pa pa! I’m loving it! So eat fresh papayas!
I don’t get people bringing Coca Cola when talking about a company fucking its consumer in the ass (here is a removed analogy for you, you seem to like those). Boycotting Coca Cola because it’s a company with terrible practices on their employees will probably not work because it doesn’t affect the consumer experience. It’s not like Coca Cola puts lead in its product or some shit that might affect the taste. Here the company reduces the quality of its product. For instance, boycotting Roku because they put ads in their HDMI cables that triggers when the user hits pause would probably work because it makes the experience shitty.
If you think boycotting doesn’t work with gaming, you haven’t paid much attention recently.
Oh I think we’re actually in the choir together. Boycott Crookacola! And Nintendo.
So we will have to instal ad blocks for video games?
We should be so lucky. Plenty of games (and movies) already have ad placements. The NHL recently added fucking banner ads with motion to the boards. I can’t even watch that shit anymore.
Firefox doesn’t have an extension for that yet.
Fuck. Advertising.
At least that feels sort of organic.
Theres a classy (well… less sleazy) way to do it. if EA want to make the billboards in the next Need for Speed game real advertisements it wouldnt feel as bad as unskippable 30 second video advertisements before each race.
The problem is they will do both.
I’m pretty sure in game billboards with real ads has been done already
And like, in sporting games having ads where the real stadiums have them isn’t a huge deal to me as long as they don’t interrupt or put focus on them.
Though I’d prefer mock ads GTA style if you need ad space for realism purposes
Wasn’t there ads for Obama in Burnout Paradise? An EA game, too.
We need Ai adblockers as fast as possible. They could even recognize ad banners on video feed and just cover them / fit screen with auto-generated fill based on pixels around
Depends how they do it—given a game is running locally, they don’t need to connect elsewhere to get ads. They could easily bundle a load of ads with the game installation. In this case, it would need game mods, and they’re not gonna be the kind of mods EA will ignore, they will actively combat it.
If they do function like a regular ad platform and fetch ads as they’re needed, something like pihole will be able to block it.
The point of advertising is bidding and tracking, so they will be loaded online, always. But they f they go over the same connection as the game itself then pi-hole can’t block it.
You might be able to prevent that (single player) app from accessing the Internet at all using a firewall. Of course they probably won’t allow that, either.
I usually don’t like the cracked version for games. Pirated executables are sketchy. Even if they work, you don’t know what may have been added.
The point of modern PPC style advertising, yeah. But traditional advertising models (such as TV spots, billboards) are based on upfront payment for a given amount of time. They don’t require the tracking aspects and the ad selection could be kept up to date via patches
It also would mean they can get ads in front of people playing offline and that they’re much harder to block using traditional methods
I’m not saying this is the way they would go, but they don’t have to go the PPC style route.
If they can use PPC then they will. It’s far more lucratieve.
Modders might be able to get rid of ads but since empress stopped cracking denuvo we’re probably screwed.
I’ll be very thoughtful about avoiding EA games.
It’s only a matter of time before this leaks into all AAA games, I hate capitalism.
Stop playing AAA games then. With or without ads they aren’t worth playing. This goes double for EA games.
If you’re still playing and paying for EA games then you deserve this.
Seems like people don’t think about it that way. Blaming “capitalism” for everything you don’t like is easy, but all it means is that these things exist because consumers want them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be paying for it.
Seems like people don’t think about it that way.
these things exist because consumers want them.
Exactly which is why I don’t have sympathy for these people. They accept it. They pay for it. In the end they encourage these publishers to push the limits due to lack of blow back.
If you don’t like something then stop supporting it. Otherwise you’re the problem.
You’re not understanding what I’m saying. This is them testing the waters. All companies that are publicly traded will continue to do whatever they can to make a profit. Consumer be damned. I don’t buy AAA games, but it doesn’t change the fact that changes like this will propagate across the gaming industry and make it worse as a whole. The issue here is them trying to turn a profit for shareholders no matter what. So many of these companies are prioritizing making a profit why they happen to release games and not vice versa. That is a result of the last stage unregulated capitalism we have in America and those same tendencies that they’ve propagated to the global economy.
Don’t be so naive to say “just don’t buy it bro.” I won’t. It doesn’t really affect me that much RIGHT NOW. But it might, the more they’re legally allowed to and the more they get away with the more everyone will do it. It happened with DLC’s, then releasing unfinished games, in game purchase in games you have to buy, etc. God forbid I don’t want the entirety of AAA gaming to be a pile of shit. It’s time for lawmakers to step in in this industry and most others and put limits on what type of things companies can do to make a profit. And this goddamn law that companies must do everything they can to turn a profit for their shareholders must be done away with.
There will ALWAYS be game devs that won’t support this shit. I’ll just continue to stick with developers that have a passion for making games instead of developers that sold them selves down the river for a couple of bucks.
My point is this is a larger problem of capitalism and just supporting companies that don’t do this doesn’t always work. The gaming industry is getting worse, and there will be less and less devs that actually don’t do this. And there will be less and less devs that are fiscally able to not do this. I have seen it happen time and time again.
