Speaking during the company's latest earnings briefing, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in-game advertising could become a "meaningful driver of growth" for the firm.
EA has tried this before, with predictable results. In 2020, EA Sports UFC 4 included full-screen ads for the Amazon Prime series The Boys that would appear during 'Replay' moments. These were absent from the game when it launched, with EA introducing the ads about a month later, thereby preventing them from being highlighted in reviews. It wasn't long before the backlash led to EA disabling the ads.
Let your player base dwindle some more. I already outright refuse to play EA crap. Fill it with ads, make ads mandatory before and after all loading screen.
Want to equip new gear? Forced ads
Want to save? Forced ads
Put so many ads that you make bajillions. Do it ea
I dare you.
Here's another great idea: persistent ads. Have ads take up a portion of the screen always. Players may want to shop while fighting a boss or taking a shot on goal.
I haven't bought any EA games in many years as well. I don't have any EA games in my Steam library, though I probably have some Xbox 360 games around. The only one I know for sure was Rogue Squadron II on Gamecube
I used to buy FIFA and NHL games, once every few years. But they've gotten so shitty I just gave up on them. I haven't played a soccer game in years now. PES used to be a good alternative but I've heard it's not great anymore either.
I hope gamers will unite.
Though it seems far more likely that kids will just buy it because "wooooo hype. Who cares about ads, I already watch a bazillion a day when doomscrolling Instagram".
Once you discover the sea of great indie games you won't even care what AAA is doing anymore.
Some of the AAA games remove cash shops after the game loses relevance anyway, like Shadow of War, meaning you get rewarded for not buying the game until it is 90% off.
I hope gamers will unite. Though it seems far more likely that kids will just buy it because “wooooo hype. Who cares about ads, I already watch a bazillion a day when doomscrolling Instagram”.
Something tells me they will, at least it's on the latest generation to step up.
Previous generations of always pushed back against this, and won.
Pretty sure the Hell Divers 2 backlash was the only time I've ever seen gamers win over a corporation. Blizzard fans have made me absolutely cynical about gamer boycotts.
Maybe not, but individuals can choose where to spend their money. The masses will still buy this shit, but I am the kinda guy will will make his own life harder based on morals.
Like I ain’t shopped on Amazon for years. Some stuff I just can’t find anymore. Not used WhatsApp for many years, makes it harder to join friend group chats. Etc.
EA already did this. Many games had real ads on billboards in the world. Need for speed underground 2 was sponsored by cingular wireless. Your ingame pager was product placement and the company's logo was on screen whenever you were doing free roam.
If they'd just be smart about it. Make the ads in-game. Like a Nike poster on a wall or a can of Pepsi on a table or something. I wouldn't have a problem with that. Making them the entire focus - however brief - just makes me hate them immeasurably.
Even then they should still be held to a higher standard.
Especially now in the era of generative AI.
The poster should have a well known character in the world lore holding the Coke, or a location in the map for the car ad, etc.
The ads should feel like they are actually a part of the world, and shouldn't be put in a game unless this can be accomplished.
In game ads don't have to suck. But because the power dynamic is such that shit ads can be shoved down players' throats with the only response being to not buy that publisher's games, the medium isn't going to find an acceptable equilibrium.
In game ads in live service games for in game assets may not suck too much though (an inevitable part of the future).
I'm pretty sure their goal is to bring ads in the same form as the mobile games, not as part of the in-game world. If they can do it on mobile, why shouldn't they on pc or consoles?
I think this will be an important thing for gamers to unite against, because if there isn't enough push back, every big studio will do the same.
Fellow gamers, now is the time to push back on this crap. If you don't do it now, you'll live with this forever. They tried doing this in past generations as well, and failed.
Spread the word, tell others. Be vocal! Advocate for this not happening.
And if someone tells you that this isn't preventable, tell them not to be cynical. Remind them of the other positive changes we were able to have happen recently in gaming, and that in the past when they tried this, the pushback was successful in keeping the gaming companies from doing so.
And remember, some of those you would try to convince are probably astroturfers/bots.
EA is on my boycott list since Origin & ME3. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯
How many of those have in-game ads though?
There's a history of pushing back against adding ads into games, that's different than boycotting the company overall. One can be successful, when another is not.
And having said that, one could even argue that their desperation to make money by putting ads into games (again) is not just about keeping the shareholders happy, but also because of people having boycotted them over the years, depriving them of additional income. You may be making more of a stand than you realize.
Remeber if they call you naive or quixotic or an idealist that means they can't win the argument with normal means and rely on name calling. Act with integrity, it's worth it!
Good thing seeing that a game is published or developed by EA, or one of its subsidiaries, is 9 times out of 10 enough for me to not bother with the game to begin with. They don't make a thing that is worth dealing with them to get to play.
That company burned all of its good will and trust with me years ago. So sure go ahead and put as many ads as you want EA. I know for sure I won't be seeing them.
This is another reason I tapping out of gamepass now. With whats happening with streaming, I don't even want to support a "good deal" when I know the prices will go up, they'll make tier pricing and add ads somewhere. I want to own my shit. I'm done with ads. Amazon last change to prime made me cancel all services except youtube and bought a 14tb hdd.
EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard are all on do not buy list for me.
Why would you pay full-price for the game then? Sales are constant, games do not hold their value. If you are a developer that is bothered by this, I suggest you stop working for EA
i just want to fucking play battlefield 1 when i want that i own. i don't care about your EA live services, i don't care about your ads. i already gave you my money because i liked the game. but i fucking hate you so much EA, like you're on top of the list
I'd be okay with this if they made those games cheaper. But no, I have to pay $94 CAD for a shit live service game that I don't even have the rights to and which the online service may be terminated at any time. Fuck EA and their monopoly on sports games.
Fuck EA of course but that AI pic is horrible. The fuck does a U-shaped Ferrari sitting in front of an Obama campaign billboard have to do with EA putting ads in games?
I know that I've played EA games before, but I don't think that I've played stuff from them recently, so I don't have a personal preference on their games.
As long as they also provide some option to pay more and not have ads, I don't really see an issue. It just becomes another option to buy the game -- if you want ad-supported, can do that, and if you want to pay directly, you can do that.
If they don't have any option to pay for an ad-free experience, then it seems like it could be obnoxious for people depending upon their ad preference.
I think that all the games that I would play -- setting aside the issue of EA specifically -- I'd rather pay for an ad-free experience, but eh. Games with ads -- as well as the option to buy an ad-supported or ad-free version at different prices -- are a major thing on, say, mobile, so obviously there are people who would prefer the ad-supported route.
Back in 2022, EA patented a system that generates in-game content and ads based on a person's playstyle.
Personally, I don't really think that I want to have my activity logged and data-mined either way, though. I would pretty much always rather pay more than have my activity recorded. I care more about that than the ads. I'm fine paying more for that, but I want the opt-out. I'd also really prefer that vendors like Steam make it very clear that if a game is being subsidized by extracting data on a user, what data is being extracted. Right now, it's kind of a free-for-all, and the games aren't running in a jail, so they can do pretty much whatever. I think that just making assumptions about what they do isn't a great idea.
I remember when I saw a comment from some guy in an airport whose phone first set off an alarm and then told him that his gate had been changed and started giving him arrows to the new gate. He hadn't told Google that he was flying anywhere. This was also back when Location Services was pretty new, so people were less-familiar with it. What had happened was that (1) Google had his location, (2) while he was indoors, while GPS didn't work well Google had identified the location of other fixed devices with Bluetooth and WiFi radios emitting unique identifiers based on other people's phones reporting them and building a global database, (3) Google could infer his position from getting their signal strengths, (4) Google had been scanning his email, seen the email that the airline had sent him about a gate change, scraped the email, and determined that he'd had a gate change.
That could be a useful feature, but the point is that he had no idea that any of that was happening or that Google was making use of the data at the time. And that was many years back -- I guarantee that data-mining has gotten no less-intensive.
I remember talking to one friend who was a software engineer in the video game industry who was involved with some game where -- after recording your gameplay for a while -- they could, with pretty good accuracy, based on correlation with past users, infer with reasonable accuracy data that included one's IQ and a set of "employability" statistics. That's probably got value to an employer, but I suspect that most people aren't thinking that they're in a job interview determining their future employment status when they're playing a video game in their living room. Like, if you're working out what a video game costs, you probably aren't thinking about the potential for it to creates information asymmetries in future job situations, where a potential employer has more data about you than you do about them.
If I paid >$0 for a game I don't want ads in that game.
Season passes, in game stores, and every other mtx in a game I paid for is insulting and generally ends up being intrusive and annoying since they tend to shove it in your face.
Counter-counter-point, “Devil’s 🥑,” games have cost $60 ($70 with the most recent generation) since, what, 2006? 2007?
$60 in 2006 is over $90 today.
So we’re paying less upfront for games now than we were in 2006. Yet costs to develop AAA games have gone up significantly.
I’m not saying ads in games is a good idea, I fucking hate ads. I also hate microtransactions. But every time prices go up people get angry. Remember the backlash when Xbox Series X and PS5 prices were standardized at $70?
I don’t know the solution. But the current trends are unsustainable. Just like everything else in late-stage capitalism.
I was going to read all of this until I got to "provide some option to pay more and not have ads" . Zero chance this would ever end in a consumer friendly way after that first payment.
This is some of the most corpo boot licking drivel I've read in a long time. It sounds like someone who has been locked in a tiny cell and forced to watch shareholder presentations on repeat. Only to be released when they can explain why all people want to be marketed to.
Pay extra for a non-ad experience? Ad preference?
Get the fuck out, and stop making shit ass mobile games.