News EA is looking at putting in-game ads in AAA games — 'We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that,' says CEO

[Admin]

EA is considering putting ads in AAA titles again but wants to do it thoughtfully this time.

EA is looking at putting in-game ads in AAA games — 'We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that,' says CEO : Read more

 

[peachpuff]

Gamers: not buying EA games has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of saving money for us

 

[helper800]

On the off chance something from EA is even worth considering, I would hope they have very scrutinized adds seamlessly added to the game if they *have* to be implemented... It would be particularly immersion breaking to see adds for modern products in a historical or traditional fantasy setting...

 

[YouFilthyHippo]

Honestly, I'm okay with this, as long as its not intrusive. If I'm driving down the street and theres a burger king billboard. That's fine. Whatever. What I dont want is this:

Load up game
Press Start to begin
15 second full screen ad you have to watch
Enter Main menu
Main Menu
Continue Career Mode
Press A to start next race
I press A
15 second full screen ad you have to watch
Race starts. Race is 20 miles long. After 10 miles, checkpoint, game pauses itself
15 second full screen ad you have to watch
Game unpauses itself and continues
Race ends
10 second full screen ad you have to watch
Race results
15 second full screen ad you have to watch
Main menu

This is like what YouTube does. If they start doing this crap, there is going to be a war lol.

 

[Giroro]

What does EA consider an ad?
As far as I can tell, most EA games give you multiple ads upselling various battlepasses, loot boxes, pay-to-win, and "$25 for a palate swap isn't a microtransaction" cosmetics as full screen popup ads as every time you boot the game. Followed by many similar banner ads for these things, all over the interface.
Or what about a game like FIFA, where the players jerseys are already covered in ads - not to forget even very existence of the game is, in itself, an ad for FIFA.

I guess what's bothering me is not that EA would put annoying ads ads in their trash games - because they already do that. I'm bothered that EA's CEO is effectively lying to shareholders that there is some big untapped financial opportunity here, when in fact most of their biggest products have prioritized the advertising over the gameplay for at least a decade.
There is very little space left to crowbar more ads into these products. Most of the profit potential has already been not just tapped, but milked dry.
What are they going to do, put persistent banner ads on the main menu? Because jokes on you, they already have those. If the ad is for an EA product vs one of their competitor's products, what's the difference to the user? It's the same bad experience, which nobody should ever pay for.
If anything, if EA started pointing these hard-coded ads at an external ad-specific server, then they would be easier to block. That's what I did with the highly distracting ads served to the literal in-world billboards in Mercenaries 2 (2005, EA).

 

[mac_angel]

The thing is, they could have been doing something like this for decades; the right way. They literally could have made billions of dollars, especially on their AAA titles, and in a way that no one would have really noticed.
Sadly, my idea of how that would have worked, having them make billions of dollars, was also meant to be to pass the savings onto the gamers and not having to make them pay up to $150 just for the 'full version' of the game. That would definitely never happen.

 

[helper800]

They literally could have made billions of dollars, especially on their AAA titles, and in a way that no one would have really noticed.

How could they have made billions more with advertisements in-game had they not been noticed? Seems contradictory, no?

 

[ezst036]

Welcome to the world Google built.

Adware used to be a pejorative word, a form of malware. Now it's mainstream. They're all malware now.

 

[helper800]

Welcome to the world Google built.

Adware used to be a pejorative word, a form of malware. Now it's mainstream. They're all malware now.

Thats certainly one way of looking at it. If it wasn't google someone else would have eventually brought us here, same with the Bethesda horse armor.

 

[derekullo]

You knew this was coming!
Don't act so surprised!
EA GAMES: DRM EVERYTHING
EA SPORTS: Advertisements it's in the game

 

[Phaaze88]

Conditioning.

 

[Eximo]

Decrease your respawn time by watching this ad!

 

[hotaru251]

I don't care what game it is....moment ads are in a game that games dead to me if I had to pay even a penny for it.

Games (especially EA ones) are rarely worth the cost of the game by time you beat it...and they want to waste your time even more w/ ads in a game you paid a lot for??

We need to start getting gaming generation into gov so we can get laws agasint this shite...

 

[Sluggotg]

Product Placement in Movies has been a non-issue for me. Forcing me to watch commercials, when I am playing a Paid for game, Not Acceptable. Back in the 80's, EA was this great company that helped small computer developers get published. Now, they are a clown show. This will only reduce their customer base, Permanently.

 

[helper800]

Product Placement in Movies has been a non-issue for me. Forcing me to watch commercials, when I am playing a Paid for game, Not Acceptable. Back in the 80's, EA was this great company that helped small computer developers get published. Now, they are a clown show. This will only reduce their customer base, Permanently.

Agreed, their last truly good game was Dragon Age: Origins imo, and that was 15 years ago... There are very few games afterwards that were worth playing.

 

[Eximo]

Product Placement in Movies has been a non-issue for me. Forcing me to watch commercials, when I am playing a Paid for game, Not Acceptable. Back in the 80's, EA was this great company that helped small computer developers get published. Now, they are a clown show. This will only reduce their customer base, Permanently.

Well, most of the time.

Sometimes it is a little too blatant and really distracting.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

How could they have made billions more with advertisements in-game had they not been noticed? Seems contradictory, no?

You need to become a paying subscriber to hear the rest of their groundbreaking knowledge. Get 1 month free with purchase of their latest vitamin supplement package.

 

[mac_angel]

How could they have made billions more with advertisements in-game had they not been noticed? Seems contradictory, no?

yea, poor choice of words, probably.
EA is talking about putting in commercials and full ads in their games. This is just going to piss off a lot of people, and as it is, piracy is back on the rise again with all these stupid decisions they keep doing in trying to make more and more money.
However, there are a lot of games where they could 'sell' brand name placements instead of no-name items, or making up fake names. And with most game 'needing' an online connection, at least to first install it, they could do that easily by region, too. Even putting in a time limit.
Those computers or laptops you see in Resident Evil; Make them Dell/Alienware, HP, etc.
The TVs; Sony, LG, etc.
In the cities, brand name stores, brand name billboards. Even liter on the ground; cola can can have a logo on it (although there will always be someone to make a complaint about not wanting a name to be recognized as 'litter', reality is, it happens. And it is still something that people will see, consciously or sub-consciously)

 

[vanadiel007]

If you make a good game, you will make a lot of money.
If you make a not so good game, you need adds and other sources of revenue.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

No wonder EA is losing money. Maybe make decent games people want to play and they wouldn't have to worry about ads. I'm looking forward to their new college football game this summer. I hope they don't spoil that game with ads.

 

[logainofhades]

Product placement ads, such as say on a billboard, or like a delivery truck, would be fine. Anything else absolutely not.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I'm ok with the above. But otherwise, if I already bought the game, I should not have to see ANY ads period. They should not put any ads that are intrusive. The money I pay for the game should be enough.

 

[35below0]

I remember seeing billboards in games with fake, made-up ads and thinking how cool it would be if that was a real Coca Cola ad!

And... that would be fine today. Billboards and posters. It would not be very hip but eh...

I wonder, if the game were Elite Dangerous, would the billboards with Coke and Reeboks or the LA Times, would they be ok?
How about a broken link/404 ^^
That would break immersion.

Whatever happens, i believe it will be the worst possible thing done in the worst possible way. + culture wars and trolls.
Fun

 

[Eximo]

How about a broken link/404 ^^
That would break immersion.

The 404 error would just be some default game asset instead if they took a few minutes to think about it.

Most products these days have 3D assets associated with them during development. They could actually make a small industry in selling asset packs to game developers, rather then paying developers to advertise directly.

Probably all still thinking fondly of the meta verse.

 

[SydB]

Call me cynical...it's EA. Pretty much guaranteed it won't be implemented in a way that is acceptable such as an ingame billboard.