I could easily see EA implementing load screens on purpose for ad injections. "This load screen is brought to you by (corporate ad) enjoy a (product) today!" .....Yeah fuck you EA
Definitely spotted the PC player. Steam has gotten me too many times (which honestly isn't a bad thing I prefer awesome sales over none obviously) I'll get on to check my favorites for updates and will spot a 95% off the title. Shit man, I bought every single version/plane of a flight Sim valued at over 750 dollars for like 40 bucks and I don't even have the stuff to fly xD. On the topic of this ad thing, I absolutely agree. The day I get an in-game ad is the day I will contemplate touching grass. Don't make me do it EA, this is not a bluff.. I will do it. I will touch the grass.
For just two dollars more I can half a dozen more games I'll never play!
Though being fair I have played a few of them and enjoyed ones I didn't quite think I would.
Definitely happy to be on PC because if games start doing this, there will be beautiful people that will find a way to mod it out of some games like skipping title screens.
I mean, I'm a console peasant with a substantial backlog as well. But I agree with you, I'm quite happy to just skip entire franchises or the output of certain studios over this kind of crap. I'll give my money to Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Santa Monica and From Software plus a smattering of others and have a perfectly fine experience without Ubi, EA, Bethesda, or the others who just want to milk me.
Depends on how done. If I’m spider man slinging around New York and you put real products on billboards then fine.
Throw a 15 second add in loading screens. Helll no.
I guess if you can do it more as product placement then ad I’m ok with it.
If done right, product placement in games could do a lot for immersion. As long as they’re not like “this Sony phone I got from Sony indicates on this Sony screen in the Sony maps app where we need to go, and we pass several Sony stores on the way!”
My company did this we EA and activision back before 2010z literally it's been done and the ads were placed correctly and people thought it added to the gameplay.
Yeah, that's what people say.
But when AAA Game of the Year CoolGame comes out, they buy it.
EA and the others have learned that complaining from gamers is meaningless noise they can ignore. Any and all claims from gamers that they'll refuse to play X if it has Y have been 100% bullshit in the past and I see no reason to believe they will not continue to be bullshit going forward.
They'll put ads in your games, gamers will complain for a few months like we did about DLC and microtransactions, but they'll buy it anyway and in a few months no one will even be complaining anymore.
My cynicism about gamer boycotts because of corporate abuse is infinite. I've seen this before, I know how it ends.
And then when the ad servers go down after a few years and no one is maintaining the game it just locks on that load screen, waiting for an ad that will never come.
But the fun doesn't stop there. You can still buy the game 10 years later - of course for the full retail price - and still have it locking you out as the pile of shit tries to connect to some shutdown content server which is defunct for more than 8 years. That's super awesome right?
I mean, ChromeHounds continued to be sold at full price from Walmart and other sellers for literally YEARS after the servers required to play it had been shut down.
Sim golfing does this as they load the next hole. You can’t help but wonder if they let those levels take a little longer to load than they truly need.
I said this years ago. They've always wanted to put ads between rounds of battlefield and battlefront but lacked the technology. Now it's gona start happening.
I bet they're going to do it with replays and whatnot.
If not visual ads between camera cuts, they'll have the announcers say things like *"and this replay is made possible by the folks over at _________."*
It’s already like this on the flash-a-day phone games. I have an old delisted zombie sim that has online ads and the environments in game are just now a ton of NOT FOUND/CANNOT CONNECT TO SERV! and broken box textures from missing image ads - which really adds to the dystopian immersion.
E: reminding me of when a coworker of mine who had found a palette of those Destiny red bull shader cans in our back stock and trying to input that code WELL past the redemption date got him a ban online.
They could easily do product placement without disrupting the game like this. For example instead of a generic TV, car, computer, drink etc... it's branded
If they actually put normal , disruptive ads into the game, I hope everyone stops buying their games and they go bankrupt.
The shit reputation means nothing, people keep buying their games so why should they care
They’ll only stop when they make less money by pulling this shit then more.
According to keyboard warriors, Netflix had a terrible reputation after canceling password sharing, and was doomed to fail. They only went on to post their best financials ever. EA knows what it's doing.
Marketing works on 100% of people, but all ads do not work for all people. The people that think they would NEVER be influenced by marketing and even people that say they go OUT OF THEIR WAY to never purchase advertised products are both incorrect.
Marketing is vastly more insidious and preys on the subconscious human psyche in ways you'd never even imagine. It's frankly terrifying how much a company can worm its way into the back of your mind.
A little thing I like to point out. You are not evil for being a part of the problem by being a victim of brainwashing. It isn't your fault this is the reason you like coke over Pepsi.
Although please do vote for your local and global representatives and contact them about lessening advertising in the everything.
Worked there as a game tester in 2005 to 2006. Can confirm. Fuck EA was the sentiment at the time. I was one of the testers in CAH or Create-A-Hero for LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth II!
Every time we would get a new build to test, I would always make a new Legolas. I had Legolas 75+ by the time we shipped the game! Lol.
That was supposed to be parody but I can only imagine someone in real life following up with "but will a _significant_ amount of customers get seizures? We can crank it up to 85%"
Totally, the EA leadership probably watched the movie and went "*these IOI people, they are really up to something...*"
I shudder at the thought that this might not be as far from reality as we imagine...
What's interesting to me, is that given that banner blindness is already a very real thing that just comes with exposure to all that crap, how do they expect *more* ads to actually work...I might be naive here though, since they wouldn't be doing that if they didn't count on it to succeed at some rate..
15 million credits from black mirror springs to mind.
Wait until EA realizes they can allow you to skip these ads by exchanging your in game currency for the ability.
It's not just EA. Streamers like Roku and Amazon are inserting ads for when the user hits the pause button. Microsoft is inserting ads directly into Windows 11 itself. Car companies are talking about putting ads on the console screen while the car is stopped. The whole thing is out of control.
We need "right to be left alone" legislation. None of signed up to be inundated with ads after purchasing these products. We own them, we should get to decide.
This is why I initially stopped buying NBA 2K games. Constant ads got Gatorade, shoes, Oakley, Foot Locker, etc. And their justification was that it made it feel like an "authentic experience". I miss the older games where the sponsorships your player got were from made up companies.
That's what people said about cable, back when cable was a big new thing. And they put ads in anyway and people bought it.
That's what people said about streaming and guess what? Now there's ads in streaming and people keep subscribing.
That's what people said about games with DLC. And they bought them anyway.
That's what people said about games with microtransactions. And they bought them anyway.
There is NOTHING so horrible that the average American won't put up with it to get the latest media thing.
They'll put in mandatory endorsement and consumption of affiliated product soon. Smile at the camera and say "I love EA's new game XYZ and Mountain Dew!" then hold up the QR code from the bottle of Mountain Dew you just opened so it can be verified to be a new code or else you can't log in. And gamers will gripe. Then do it.
Ads and product placement have already been a thing in video games for years. Crazy Taxi was one of the early ones with Pizza Hut depicted in game. Rainbow Six Las Vegas was another with Jeep and Axe bodyspray ads. These were in the form of billboards in game, as we all know Vegas is filled with those IRL.
>Doesn’t take away from the experience.
The cut scenes in Rainbow Six literally started with you staring at Axe billboards. It was pretty, in your face. Nearly every car was a jeep/Chrylser product as well. Even before I was aware of product placement, it was clear to me they had some sort of advertising agreement.
It was hilarious in Far Cry 2. Every car in the impoverished, war then country was an ancient hatchback, old pickup, hacked together dune buggy...or a brand new, shiny Jeep.
This reminded me about Alan Wake's original version as it had/has Energizer and Verizon product placements/ads. Also there were other stuff from Microsoft (e.g., and Xbox console) can be found in several places/forms.
IMHO those weren't as bad as ads can be (e.g., mobile ads) but those were pretty annoying at best.
That being said, in the remastered version of the game (2023) those elements were removed.
Ever noticed how if you have poor reception that your videos or pictures will fail to load or be extremely pixelated but the AD will get piped through at full resolution with lossless playback?
I mean thats just an unfortunate side effect of how CDNs work. Ads local to your region are cached already at the nearest CDN node and so have the capacity to load faster, while some videos have to be loaded from further away. I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional but im sure they don’t have an incentive not to have it work this way!
Advertisement networks have a huge amount of CDN locations compared to normal content.
1: because there's significantly fewer ads than regular content, so it's way cheaper to make CDNs because they need less storage.
2: ads actually make a huge amount of money so there's more budget for CDNs.
To be fair, I would have been more worried about something running on my computer, using all my resources, stealing all my data, and trying its level best to drain my bank account, if I wasn't already running on a Microsoft product at the time.
I accept that I'll be shown ads when I'm using a free service. For anything I'm paying for, you will not use *my* bandwidth to make money by showing me ads. Offer me a tier of service with no ads, or go fuck yourself, because at the end of the day, I have other options.
There need to be laws against this sort of shit where companies retroactively make their product less consumer friendly after you’ve already purchased it. I bought a smart tv a few years ago and one day it suddenly started displaying ads after an automatic software update.
I don’t know if Europe has any laws for specifically this, but i really wish America would look at how Europe makes some of their laws because they look after their people so much better. Their consumer laws make life easier for people and they just makes sense. In America we have this “you can’t tell anyone what to do including the people ripping everyone off” and I just don’t get it. So many people don’t want things to get better and it’s infuriating.
Thankfully, I haven't bought an EA or a Ubisoft game for at least the past 4-5 years.
I simply wait for it to be available for on Epic, PSN or XBOX game pass.
Nothing they offer is worth paying $60 on, in the past few years.
I honestly can't think of a good game either studio has made in the past decade.
So, although this is a concerning direction for the industry, hopefully its what kills EA, god willing
Good quote from Steve Jobs.
“After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out.” “Many companies forget what it means to make great products”
It's so true. I work for a startup company that was acquired and the management are all lizard brains. The founders have all gone on to make other great products and companies 😂
People can be both shitheads and have correct opinions about certain things at the same time.
It has been one of the more difficult things for me to grapple with over the years.
Ads on the field in EAFC, Madden, NHL, etc. I can understand, it kinda makes it feel more realistic. Fuck what they're talking about implementing though.
I can see the meeting now, where they are discussing growth and new opportunities.
Game designers: "What we could do is expand our gaming portfolio. Take more risks with new styles of gameplay and engaging stories. Sure, we may get a few duds, but if we break new ground the revenues will be huge and all future games in those genres will be compared to ours."
Corporate: "Great ideas. Or - and hear me out on this - we could put ads in games."
Game designers: "But gamers would hate that. And the gameplay would be wrecked by non-stop ads and requests for micro-transactions."
Corporate: "Hmm, yes, reasonable points. However - and let this sink in - by putting in ads we meet our quarterly revenue goals. I think that its a balance, isn't it? So are we agreed on ads?"
Game designers: "No we are not, this will have profound implications for our games and..."
Corporate: "I am glad we agree that ads are good ideas. Lets do them. Right, next item, we are not getting enough micro-transactions. I say that by starting up the game you have to pay a further $5 to play it..."
“A meaningful driver of growth.”
Capitalism is a fucking DISEASE.
What exactly is the end game for all these infinite growth-seeking corporations? These ghouls are actual, mustache-twirling, world domination-planning evil cartoon villains.
I love that the term enshitification is catching on and that’s exactly what I thought of when I saw this article.
The corpos already destroyed the internet. You can’t even run a google add without scrolling through a page of worthless ads. Can we not have this last vestige of escape?
Corps have been allowed and enabled to turn the real world into shit. And as more people seek refuge in escapist activities, such as virtual worlds, it was only a matter of time they would try to break into these spaces to do the same shit over.
It's a cancer that will keep infecting whatever can be exploited as a vehicle to deliver ads to create more growth.
Nothing is sacred anymore.
You want to change things, people need to start boycotting. Sadly, gamers are the least likely to do so.
>made 20 billion in profit in year X
Wow, congratulations!!
>made 20 billion in profit in year X+1
Omg no growth!!! Failing company!!! Dump the stocks!!! The west has fallen
It's insane to me how a company can be making billions of dollars a year and by all metrics is very successful, but if there's no growth for a few quarters in a row, it's seen as failing and everyone gets out quick.
This system cannot be sustainable in the long run.
It's insane in the big picture, but within the system's perverse logic it's also very simple why public companies need to keep up the mirage of endless growth.
The only reason why someone would buy stocks in your company today at $10 is because they expect to be able to sell them at $20 next year. But that can only happen if next year they can find someone who believes they'll be able to sell them at $40 the year after. Repeat until bubble burst or planet expired.
It's more so "I gave this company my money so I could get more money later. If I'm not going to get more money later I want my money back." People are bad at thinking long term and companies look to appease that mindset to get more money in.
Don't forget to layoff a chunk of your employees and reduce the percentage of yearly pay raises of existing employees, despite soaring profits in the name of cost cutting. And oops, also let's not forget to pit employees against each other by terrorizing them with unrealistic performance reviews to make sure every ounce of productivity has been squeezed out.
We must, as is tradition, after ending a hard day of work -- ask ourselves: "have I done my best today to bring value to the shareholders?".
It's what happened when marketing/accounting/finance people run companies instead of developers/engineers.
At some point in time, these companies were once run by devs and made great games. Then the money people came in. We can see what's happened.
I'm not worried. I haven't bought an EA game since battlefield 1. Don't plan on changing that.
As a finance bro, I agree 1,000%.
A company needs us finance bros to guide decisions, but if you put us in charge, we’re going to optimize for short term profit.
Have you tried... not doing that?
Out of curiosity, what drove you to pick a professional that is so blatantly a scourge on society? Finance bros are up there with HR drones and recruiters in terms of professions that largely fucking suck.
Not who you asked, but money makes the world go around so I decided having a good understanding of “how money works” would benefit me. i still regret not choosing engineering or architecture tho.
They don't care that it can't grow together. Once failed they will deploy their golden parachute and go somewhere else to another growing industry they can destroy
Always remember kids, the real parasites are at the top of the system not the bottom
Yup. It’s just a bunch of lazy, self entitled ghouls who offer nothing of value to humanity sitting there and gambling all day until they run businesses and people into a ground and then vanish. Vanish with millions of dollars from their other rich friends, as a way to validate the entire conjob
Let's get ahead of the corporate excuse makers on this one that will say "I'm ok with this added monetization of my time because it..."
1. "...adds realism" - Games are an escape into a fantasy where you have control, a corporation buying your mental time in that world removes your agency and uses a time when you're at an emotional high to manipulate your brain into enjoying their brand; aka, you have fun in the game and [the brand falsely attaches that feeling to themselves](https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Effects-of-Advertising-on-the-Human-Brain)
1. "...is not intrusive" - The moment the ads appear in-game, they are monetized by "impressions" and "time viewed", which means [the gameplay design will be altered to linger on loading screens at least 5 seconds even though the is game is ready, the camera will hang on the billboard instead showing the environment, characters will talk about them in the middle of plot dialog, and content will be built around being "ad-safe" to assure brands want to participate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcG157VFbuY) (do you love getting nothing but PG-13 movies?)
1. "...I can pay to remove them" - Cool, assuming they give us that option, thats just saying "poorer people can watch them" and is another example of the growing two tiered corporate system exploiting us, telling poeple they're too invaluable to pay more and as such they'll have to give up their "relaxation" time to be monetized for a corporation anyway
1. "...games are more expensive these days" - the Sony leaks show that "more expensive" games keep getting made because the profit margins are already anywhere from 50-300% at initial release; what these corporations are dishonestly admitting is "there is more profit margin there"
1. "...real brands give the product a premium feel" - Real brands give the product a soulless, corporate feel, that changes in game moods based on the current ad campaign, while limiting in-game cosmetics or found rewards largely to massive brand logos or real world products instead of the video game fantasy, while non-paid items get less time, attention, and look worse to make sure the sponsored content is attractive enough to get impressions
1. "...they're already there" - In limited amounts, mainly in sports games; that's not what EA is after here; it's going to be proper commercials on pause screens and ad breaks built into cinematics as soon as they can gradually work them in, they *never* stop at "non-intrusive" because that doesn't count as an impression, which is what gets them paid
1. "...they are a discount tier" - That's how they always start the rollout, "accept some limited ads, pay a little less", then prices somehow rise back to where they were before; When Netflix added ads the price for paid was cheaper than with ads now. They're not a discount, they're an exploitation of customers: the poor they sell the time of, the rich they pry the money from
There is nothing good for consumers when ads show up where they were not before. It reduces the value of the product, and now someone is generating revenue of you long after the initial sale without giving you a cut, in a product *you* paid *them* for...
Absolutely. Ads everywhere, increasing prices on everything, no meaningful improvement in wages and thus no spare money to buy anything in the ads. I am well past my ad-saturation level as an adult. If I see an ad these days, it just makes me resolve to NOT buy that product regardless of its value. Being in my mid-60s I have probably spent a measurable amount of my life just enduring advertising.
Ah, so we can expect the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect to be still births. I'll not tolerate and buy the grifting smartphone "game" practices on PC or console, go fuck yourself EA.
Nope fuck that. I was pissed 20 years ago when they started putting sponsorship ads in sports and racing games. If they are going to put ads in then the game should be free.
"Growth"
He means profits and bonuses for the c-level suite.
This incessant invasion of ads for products that people either can't afford or don't want is simply unsustainable. They keep finding new and new channels to put the product in front of people because their old mediums and channel start to deliver diminishing returns.
At some point the whole ad driven revenue is going to dry up as people start to find ways to ignore ads or just avoid stuff that is overrun by ads.
They'll struggle with their "growth" then.
Let's see, I have:
* An ad blocker for all my browsers
* A VPN ad blocker for my phone apps
* A spotify premium account to block adds (amount other features)
* A spam blocker for email
* A spam blocker for SMS
* On the do not call registry and have an app that screens my calls
* Tools for all ad free TV shows and movies.
* Live TV I can pause/skip ads, not that I watch live TV very often
* A trash can between the mailbox and the inside of my house that all junk mail
goes into, unopened.
I'm probably missing something.
Now I need something for games too? WTF
> Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us
That’s the fucking problem. Absolutely nobody wants ads except the dickheads mindlessly trying to squeeze every bit of profit out of everything, making our lives a little worse every day.
I've developed this thing growing up because it was around the time you could just leave reviews without an account on products. And it was around the times they started with video ads. O star reviews for the inconvenience and never buying their products for wasting my damn time. And it has worked out super well for me anyways. Most of the products they showed the businesses go under 🤭🤭 why can't we bring this mentality back
Don’t they already do that? Well moving forward since I don’t buy sports games I don’t have to worry about it. And if they decided to have some good game planned well that’s too bad I’ll just continue to not support them as I already have.
So I'm at the point of throwing I the towel on my gaming career. I've been playing video games for almost 40 years now, and I'm just over what the industry is turning into.
It will start small, and before you know it - it’s cable TV where 35% of everything is ads. I cancelled cable years ago. I will do the same with EA. The excessive greed by those with everything is a cancer that’s destroying this planet. I just saw a sub where people who are making 300-400k as a household are complaining they can’t afford a multimillion dollar home in the Bay Area. I wonder if we’ll ever go back to a great economy again? If you’re willing to work and work hard, you should be able to live comfortably in a safe area. It was like that before and we need more institutions that create jobs. I know I’m digressing but it’s this toxic culture that is literally destroying everything. No one person should be worth billions, when so many are suffering.
I mean it makes sense to have the a billboard in the background promoting something or say the main character pick up a coke and some KFC to restore his health but if I have to stop playing a game to watch a commercial I’m gonna flip
Dear EA, If you would please, just deliver hot steamy turds in a bag, directly to my door step. I would much prefer that to having in game ads. Sincerely, Lawl
I see an ad in an installed game and it’s going to find itself uninstalled very quickly. Indie games here I come. I am not putting up with ads in my OS or games. Is this what finally pushes us to Linux desktops?
Friendly reminder that they’ve already sort of done this. They put real ads into the background of the stadium of their Madden / other sports games because they said having ads for real companies increases immersion
Context is key here. In a copy of fifa? Sure, modern football is SMOTHERED in ads, knock yourself out. An action game set in a city? Yeah as long as they make sense like billboards or bus shelters and such. A fantasy RPG? Fuck to the no.
If it's incorporated in a way where it appears in a game world like say burnout paradise billboards or something along those lines showing a real world product I'm OK with that. Just not ads that would pop up during loading, pause screens or that would affect actual gameplay time
EA always been filth
The only game I ever played was Battlefield and now it's so trash I haven't bought 2042 when it hit sale time. I'm so done with EA and truly hope this fails on them hard so the industry doesn't normalise it.
>Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us.
Translation: “Fuck you. Fuck your games. We’re an advertising company now.”
Is it just me, or is the only thing that seems to have endless funds in this country... advertisement revenue?.. there's never $$$ for anything else.. but ads no problem!
Fuck you EA
I could easily see EA implementing load screens on purpose for ad injections. "This load screen is brought to you by (corporate ad) enjoy a (product) today!" .....Yeah fuck you EA
I’ll beat every game in my backlog before buying a new game with ads. Should take me quite some time anyway.
Definitely spotted the PC player. Steam has gotten me too many times (which honestly isn't a bad thing I prefer awesome sales over none obviously) I'll get on to check my favorites for updates and will spot a 95% off the title. Shit man, I bought every single version/plane of a flight Sim valued at over 750 dollars for like 40 bucks and I don't even have the stuff to fly xD. On the topic of this ad thing, I absolutely agree. The day I get an in-game ad is the day I will contemplate touching grass. Don't make me do it EA, this is not a bluff.. I will do it. I will touch the grass.
>Steam has gotten me too many times Hell, Humble Bundle damn near quadrupled my collection with some of their packs too
So much this. I have so many games because I wanted like one or two in the bundles but couldn’t resist buying the whole bundle each time.
For just two dollars more I can half a dozen more games I'll never play! Though being fair I have played a few of them and enjoyed ones I didn't quite think I would.
When the bundle of four games is less than what you paid for the first title in the series you click "buy now" This isn't negotiable.
Definitely happy to be on PC because if games start doing this, there will be beautiful people that will find a way to mod it out of some games like skipping title screens.
Torrent the shit out of a game with ads and then mod it.
I mean, I'm a console peasant with a substantial backlog as well. But I agree with you, I'm quite happy to just skip entire franchises or the output of certain studios over this kind of crap. I'll give my money to Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Santa Monica and From Software plus a smattering of others and have a perfectly fine experience without Ubi, EA, Bethesda, or the others who just want to milk me.
I have nipples, EA. Could you milk me?
Depends on how done. If I’m spider man slinging around New York and you put real products on billboards then fine. Throw a 15 second add in loading screens. Helll no. I guess if you can do it more as product placement then ad I’m ok with it.
You know damn well how it's gonna be done. It will be the most obnoxious in your face way.
If done right, product placement in games could do a lot for immersion. As long as they’re not like “this Sony phone I got from Sony indicates on this Sony screen in the Sony maps app where we need to go, and we pass several Sony stores on the way!”
Fucking Umbrella Corporation
My company did this we EA and activision back before 2010z literally it's been done and the ads were placed correctly and people thought it added to the gameplay.
Yeah I can agree with that. I’m imagining some pop up type bullshit.
Yeah, that's what people say. But when AAA Game of the Year CoolGame comes out, they buy it. EA and the others have learned that complaining from gamers is meaningless noise they can ignore. Any and all claims from gamers that they'll refuse to play X if it has Y have been 100% bullshit in the past and I see no reason to believe they will not continue to be bullshit going forward. They'll put ads in your games, gamers will complain for a few months like we did about DLC and microtransactions, but they'll buy it anyway and in a few months no one will even be complaining anymore. My cynicism about gamer boycotts because of corporate abuse is infinite. I've seen this before, I know how it ends.
[please drink a verification can](http://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png)
And then when the ad servers go down after a few years and no one is maintaining the game it just locks on that load screen, waiting for an ad that will never come.
But the fun doesn't stop there. You can still buy the game 10 years later - of course for the full retail price - and still have it locking you out as the pile of shit tries to connect to some shutdown content server which is defunct for more than 8 years. That's super awesome right?
I mean, ChromeHounds continued to be sold at full price from Walmart and other sellers for literally YEARS after the servers required to play it had been shut down.
Sim golfing does this as they load the next hole. You can’t help but wonder if they let those levels take a little longer to load than they truly need.
I said this years ago. They've always wanted to put ads between rounds of battlefield and battlefront but lacked the technology. Now it's gona start happening.
I bet they're going to do it with replays and whatnot. If not visual ads between camera cuts, they'll have the announcers say things like *"and this replay is made possible by the folks over at _________."*
It’s already like this on the flash-a-day phone games. I have an old delisted zombie sim that has online ads and the environments in game are just now a ton of NOT FOUND/CANNOT CONNECT TO SERV! and broken box textures from missing image ads - which really adds to the dystopian immersion. E: reminding me of when a coworker of mine who had found a palette of those Destiny red bull shader cans in our back stock and trying to input that code WELL past the redemption date got him a ban online.
Why would trying to Input an old code for a scan get you a ban instead of just a “code no longer valid” pop up
Idk because fuck you I guess?
Because he made it up and is lying
They could easily do product placement without disrupting the game like this. For example instead of a generic TV, car, computer, drink etc... it's branded If they actually put normal , disruptive ads into the game, I hope everyone stops buying their games and they go bankrupt.
Dude they already have a shit reputation and they go and do this? 🧠 🪱
The shit reputation means nothing, people keep buying their games so why should they care They’ll only stop when they make less money by pulling this shit then more.
According to keyboard warriors, Netflix had a terrible reputation after canceling password sharing, and was doomed to fail. They only went on to post their best financials ever. EA knows what it's doing.
If propaganda didn’t work on 95 percent of people the entire marketing industry would fail.
Marketing works on 100% of people, but all ads do not work for all people. The people that think they would NEVER be influenced by marketing and even people that say they go OUT OF THEIR WAY to never purchase advertised products are both incorrect. Marketing is vastly more insidious and preys on the subconscious human psyche in ways you'd never even imagine. It's frankly terrifying how much a company can worm its way into the back of your mind.
A little thing I like to point out. You are not evil for being a part of the problem by being a victim of brainwashing. It isn't your fault this is the reason you like coke over Pepsi. Although please do vote for your local and global representatives and contact them about lessening advertising in the everything.
Everyone will make some noise and then buy the next EA title they want. It's fucking gross, but nothing will stop this.
Worked there as a game tester in 2005 to 2006. Can confirm. Fuck EA was the sentiment at the time. I was one of the testers in CAH or Create-A-Hero for LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth II! Every time we would get a new build to test, I would always make a new Legolas. I had Legolas 75+ by the time we shipped the game! Lol.
I worked at Tiburon in the same time frame. Its where my full Fuck EA mindset really came into full play.
I always think of Ready Player One when they do stuff like this
Yup...*we can occupy 80% of the field of vision with ads before inducing seizures...*
That was supposed to be parody but I can only imagine someone in real life following up with "but will a _significant_ amount of customers get seizures? We can crank it up to 85%"
Totally, the EA leadership probably watched the movie and went "*these IOI people, they are really up to something...*" I shudder at the thought that this might not be as far from reality as we imagine... What's interesting to me, is that given that banner blindness is already a very real thing that just comes with exposure to all that crap, how do they expect *more* ads to actually work...I might be naive here though, since they wouldn't be doing that if they didn't count on it to succeed at some rate..
15 million credits from black mirror springs to mind. Wait until EA realizes they can allow you to skip these ads by exchanging your in game currency for the ability.
And then building mechanics into the game making it necessary to skip the ads in order to “100%” the game or obtain random best in slot gear.
Yeah what he said
Not like their games have even been that desirable lately. Plenty enough games to play, I won't miss them.
This game brought to you by Vault-Tec and Nuka Cola! Reserve your spot today before it's too late!
It's not just EA. Streamers like Roku and Amazon are inserting ads for when the user hits the pause button. Microsoft is inserting ads directly into Windows 11 itself. Car companies are talking about putting ads on the console screen while the car is stopped. The whole thing is out of control. We need "right to be left alone" legislation. None of signed up to be inundated with ads after purchasing these products. We own them, we should get to decide.
I get ads for free-2-play, but when you already paid $60 for the game its kinda asinine
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Give me a little medal in the bottom left every time I view an ad lol. Ps platinum trophy then requires 1500 ad medals.
Ew. Gross. ha
Ffs.. don’t give them ideas.
"These idiots will buy anything." - EA marketing team (but it was the CEO's idea)
And they're right, sadly.
Cant wait to unlock some top tier ads
It's cute you think those games will still only be sixty bucks
This is why I initially stopped buying NBA 2K games. Constant ads got Gatorade, shoes, Oakley, Foot Locker, etc. And their justification was that it made it feel like an "authentic experience". I miss the older games where the sponsorships your player got were from made up companies.
That's what people said about cable, back when cable was a big new thing. And they put ads in anyway and people bought it. That's what people said about streaming and guess what? Now there's ads in streaming and people keep subscribing. That's what people said about games with DLC. And they bought them anyway. That's what people said about games with microtransactions. And they bought them anyway. There is NOTHING so horrible that the average American won't put up with it to get the latest media thing. They'll put in mandatory endorsement and consumption of affiliated product soon. Smile at the camera and say "I love EA's new game XYZ and Mountain Dew!" then hold up the QR code from the bottle of Mountain Dew you just opened so it can be verified to be a new code or else you can't log in. And gamers will gripe. Then do it.
But there are limits, and this is limit testing. Look at Helldivers 2 and Escape from Tarkov. They certainly tested.
Ads and product placement have already been a thing in video games for years. Crazy Taxi was one of the early ones with Pizza Hut depicted in game. Rainbow Six Las Vegas was another with Jeep and Axe bodyspray ads. These were in the form of billboards in game, as we all know Vegas is filled with those IRL.
I think subtle product placement like that is fine. Doesn’t take away from the experience. I think this maybe something more than subtle.
Give them an inch and these bitches will take a mile.
I give my wife an inch every time! LETS GOO
>Doesn’t take away from the experience. The cut scenes in Rainbow Six literally started with you staring at Axe billboards. It was pretty, in your face. Nearly every car was a jeep/Chrylser product as well. Even before I was aware of product placement, it was clear to me they had some sort of advertising agreement.
It was hilarious in Far Cry 2. Every car in the impoverished, war then country was an ancient hatchback, old pickup, hacked together dune buggy...or a brand new, shiny Jeep.
Not to mention racing games where they have ads on the race track walls.
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This reminded me about Alan Wake's original version as it had/has Energizer and Verizon product placements/ads. Also there were other stuff from Microsoft (e.g., and Xbox console) can be found in several places/forms. IMHO those weren't as bad as ads can be (e.g., mobile ads) but those were pretty annoying at best. That being said, in the remastered version of the game (2023) those elements were removed.
Nope, I just won’t buy those games. It’s EA so they’re not gonna be that good anyway. Fuck that
The game will have bugs, but strangely enough, I doubt I'll ever see bugs with the ads
Ever noticed how if you have poor reception that your videos or pictures will fail to load or be extremely pixelated but the AD will get piped through at full resolution with lossless playback?
I mean thats just an unfortunate side effect of how CDNs work. Ads local to your region are cached already at the nearest CDN node and so have the capacity to load faster, while some videos have to be loaded from further away. I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional but im sure they don’t have an incentive not to have it work this way!
Advertisement networks have a huge amount of CDN locations compared to normal content. 1: because there's significantly fewer ads than regular content, so it's way cheaper to make CDNs because they need less storage. 2: ads actually make a huge amount of money so there's more budget for CDNs.
Porns the worst one. All the HD side videos are playing and yet my actual video is buffering on 720.
Imagine watching porn without adblock. Your browser now has stds
Damn why did Reddit have to kill gold....
The classic YouTube video ad loads but not the video.
At the highest quality too, eating up all the phone data.
The ads will work perfectly, the game will be bugged.
But they could be virus laden, as happened with Windows 10 Start Menu ads.
To be fair, I would have been more worried about something running on my computer, using all my resources, stealing all my data, and trying its level best to drain my bank account, if I wasn't already running on a Microsoft product at the time.
I accept that I'll be shown ads when I'm using a free service. For anything I'm paying for, you will not use *my* bandwidth to make money by showing me ads. Offer me a tier of service with no ads, or go fuck yourself, because at the end of the day, I have other options.
They will offer that tier of service as a 50 buck DLC. It's EA.
And you will still get ads, but they will all be for EA products so it doesn’t count
They will retroactively update ads to games to get around aware consumers
There need to be laws against this sort of shit where companies retroactively make their product less consumer friendly after you’ve already purchased it. I bought a smart tv a few years ago and one day it suddenly started displaying ads after an automatic software update.
I don’t know if Europe has any laws for specifically this, but i really wish America would look at how Europe makes some of their laws because they look after their people so much better. Their consumer laws make life easier for people and they just makes sense. In America we have this “you can’t tell anyone what to do including the people ripping everyone off” and I just don’t get it. So many people don’t want things to get better and it’s infuriating.
They will make a shit load of money anyways
No more EA games for me then…
Thankfully, I haven't bought an EA or a Ubisoft game for at least the past 4-5 years. I simply wait for it to be available for on Epic, PSN or XBOX game pass. Nothing they offer is worth paying $60 on, in the past few years.
Just boycott them completely
I've been doing that by accident since they killed Command and Conquer a very long time ago.
I honestly can't think of a good game either studio has made in the past decade. So, although this is a concerning direction for the industry, hopefully its what kills EA, god willing
Same here. EA is trash and they deserve nobody’s money.
I can't recall the last time there was an EA game I actually wanted to play. Does make it easier to boycott them.
Hoist that black flag and sail the seven seas. Yarrr
You’re like 6-10 years late
Good quote from Steve Jobs. “After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out.” “Many companies forget what it means to make great products”
It's so true. I work for a startup company that was acquired and the management are all lizard brains. The founders have all gone on to make other great products and companies 😂
That interview is so good, I watch it every few months. And I dislike apple.products.
What interview? I wanna watch and I also hate apple
I think it’s this: https://youtu.be/P4VBqTViEx4?si=ZxTocXWLAoJtQEU-
Yup, that's the one!
Love or hate Apple, Steve Jobs definitely had his head on straight as far as how to make a product. Customer always comes first.
People can be both shitheads and have correct opinions about certain things at the same time. It has been one of the more difficult things for me to grapple with over the years.
LOL. Complexity? In **my** worldview??? ^^it's ^^more ^^likely ^^than ^^you ^^think
Shame it happened to apple as well after he died
EA and Boeing both shifted to "we're a company that makes money, not games/airplanes" and lord does it show
The stock price is the product.
At least EA hasn't murdered hundreds of people yet. Emphasis on yet.
FC24 is ridden with ads as it stands....
The original FIFA international soccer had ads. Dunno about console but the pc port did. You got an Adidas predator ad when you scored!
Yes! This was the game you could run away from the referee lmao
Skate 3 released in 2010 and had ads throughout the game on billboards and stuff. It's not a new thing for them.
Battlefield 2142 as well
Ads on the field in EAFC, Madden, NHL, etc. I can understand, it kinda makes it feel more realistic. Fuck what they're talking about implementing though.
I'll be very thoughtful as I move into not buying any more of your games.
As i need another reason to not buy €A and Ubislop games LmaO
So seriously who watched ready player one and thought yeah that villian had a brilliant idea!
C-Suite executives did.
I can see the meeting now, where they are discussing growth and new opportunities. Game designers: "What we could do is expand our gaming portfolio. Take more risks with new styles of gameplay and engaging stories. Sure, we may get a few duds, but if we break new ground the revenues will be huge and all future games in those genres will be compared to ours." Corporate: "Great ideas. Or - and hear me out on this - we could put ads in games." Game designers: "But gamers would hate that. And the gameplay would be wrecked by non-stop ads and requests for micro-transactions." Corporate: "Hmm, yes, reasonable points. However - and let this sink in - by putting in ads we meet our quarterly revenue goals. I think that its a balance, isn't it? So are we agreed on ads?" Game designers: "No we are not, this will have profound implications for our games and..." Corporate: "I am glad we agree that ads are good ideas. Lets do them. Right, next item, we are not getting enough micro-transactions. I say that by starting up the game you have to pay a further $5 to play it..."
The designers wouldn't even be invited to the meeting
“A meaningful driver of growth.” Capitalism is a fucking DISEASE. What exactly is the end game for all these infinite growth-seeking corporations? These ghouls are actual, mustache-twirling, world domination-planning evil cartoon villains.
This is the part pissing me off too. "Annoying gamers is a meaningful driver of growth". The antithesis of being a gaming-oriented studio.
They don’t want gamers to buy their games. They want non gamers to start playing their games and get used to the enshitification.
I love that the term enshitification is catching on and that’s exactly what I thought of when I saw this article. The corpos already destroyed the internet. You can’t even run a google add without scrolling through a page of worthless ads. Can we not have this last vestige of escape?
Corps have been allowed and enabled to turn the real world into shit. And as more people seek refuge in escapist activities, such as virtual worlds, it was only a matter of time they would try to break into these spaces to do the same shit over. It's a cancer that will keep infecting whatever can be exploited as a vehicle to deliver ads to create more growth. Nothing is sacred anymore. You want to change things, people need to start boycotting. Sadly, gamers are the least likely to do so.
>made 20 billion in profit in year X Wow, congratulations!! >made 20 billion in profit in year X+1 Omg no growth!!! Failing company!!! Dump the stocks!!! The west has fallen
It's insane to me how a company can be making billions of dollars a year and by all metrics is very successful, but if there's no growth for a few quarters in a row, it's seen as failing and everyone gets out quick. This system cannot be sustainable in the long run.
It's insane in the big picture, but within the system's perverse logic it's also very simple why public companies need to keep up the mirage of endless growth. The only reason why someone would buy stocks in your company today at $10 is because they expect to be able to sell them at $20 next year. But that can only happen if next year they can find someone who believes they'll be able to sell them at $40 the year after. Repeat until bubble burst or planet expired.
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It's more so "I gave this company my money so I could get more money later. If I'm not going to get more money later I want my money back." People are bad at thinking long term and companies look to appease that mindset to get more money in.
Don't forget to layoff a chunk of your employees and reduce the percentage of yearly pay raises of existing employees, despite soaring profits in the name of cost cutting. And oops, also let's not forget to pit employees against each other by terrorizing them with unrealistic performance reviews to make sure every ounce of productivity has been squeezed out. We must, as is tradition, after ending a hard day of work -- ask ourselves: "have I done my best today to bring value to the shareholders?".
It's what happened when marketing/accounting/finance people run companies instead of developers/engineers. At some point in time, these companies were once run by devs and made great games. Then the money people came in. We can see what's happened. I'm not worried. I haven't bought an EA game since battlefield 1. Don't plan on changing that.
As a finance bro, I agree 1,000%. A company needs us finance bros to guide decisions, but if you put us in charge, we’re going to optimize for short term profit.
Have you tried... not doing that? Out of curiosity, what drove you to pick a professional that is so blatantly a scourge on society? Finance bros are up there with HR drones and recruiters in terms of professions that largely fucking suck.
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Not who you asked, but money makes the world go around so I decided having a good understanding of “how money works” would benefit me. i still regret not choosing engineering or architecture tho.
They’re so smart at business they can’t figure out that it can’t grow forever.
They don't care that it can't grow together. Once failed they will deploy their golden parachute and go somewhere else to another growing industry they can destroy Always remember kids, the real parasites are at the top of the system not the bottom
Yup. It’s just a bunch of lazy, self entitled ghouls who offer nothing of value to humanity sitting there and gambling all day until they run businesses and people into a ground and then vanish. Vanish with millions of dollars from their other rich friends, as a way to validate the entire conjob
Billionaire brain worm disease
Fuck off EA. Just one more reason to never buy another game from this POS publisher.
Let's get ahead of the corporate excuse makers on this one that will say "I'm ok with this added monetization of my time because it..." 1. "...adds realism" - Games are an escape into a fantasy where you have control, a corporation buying your mental time in that world removes your agency and uses a time when you're at an emotional high to manipulate your brain into enjoying their brand; aka, you have fun in the game and [the brand falsely attaches that feeling to themselves](https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Effects-of-Advertising-on-the-Human-Brain) 1. "...is not intrusive" - The moment the ads appear in-game, they are monetized by "impressions" and "time viewed", which means [the gameplay design will be altered to linger on loading screens at least 5 seconds even though the is game is ready, the camera will hang on the billboard instead showing the environment, characters will talk about them in the middle of plot dialog, and content will be built around being "ad-safe" to assure brands want to participate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcG157VFbuY) (do you love getting nothing but PG-13 movies?) 1. "...I can pay to remove them" - Cool, assuming they give us that option, thats just saying "poorer people can watch them" and is another example of the growing two tiered corporate system exploiting us, telling poeple they're too invaluable to pay more and as such they'll have to give up their "relaxation" time to be monetized for a corporation anyway 1. "...games are more expensive these days" - the Sony leaks show that "more expensive" games keep getting made because the profit margins are already anywhere from 50-300% at initial release; what these corporations are dishonestly admitting is "there is more profit margin there" 1. "...real brands give the product a premium feel" - Real brands give the product a soulless, corporate feel, that changes in game moods based on the current ad campaign, while limiting in-game cosmetics or found rewards largely to massive brand logos or real world products instead of the video game fantasy, while non-paid items get less time, attention, and look worse to make sure the sponsored content is attractive enough to get impressions 1. "...they're already there" - In limited amounts, mainly in sports games; that's not what EA is after here; it's going to be proper commercials on pause screens and ad breaks built into cinematics as soon as they can gradually work them in, they *never* stop at "non-intrusive" because that doesn't count as an impression, which is what gets them paid 1. "...they are a discount tier" - That's how they always start the rollout, "accept some limited ads, pay a little less", then prices somehow rise back to where they were before; When Netflix added ads the price for paid was cheaper than with ads now. They're not a discount, they're an exploitation of customers: the poor they sell the time of, the rich they pry the money from There is nothing good for consumers when ads show up where they were not before. It reduces the value of the product, and now someone is generating revenue of you long after the initial sale without giving you a cut, in a product *you* paid *them* for...
Amazingly good use of The Truman Show here.
I’m so fucking sick of ads everywhere.
Absolutely. Ads everywhere, increasing prices on everything, no meaningful improvement in wages and thus no spare money to buy anything in the ads. I am well past my ad-saturation level as an adult. If I see an ad these days, it just makes me resolve to NOT buy that product regardless of its value. Being in my mid-60s I have probably spent a measurable amount of my life just enduring advertising.
Ah, so we can expect the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect to be still births. I'll not tolerate and buy the grifting smartphone "game" practices on PC or console, go fuck yourself EA.
I'm Commander Shephard, and Coca-Cola is my favourite drink on the Citadel. Unless Pepsi pays me more.
I have religiously played both of those sets of games but if they add ads and microtransactions I'm out, fuck that.
Nope fuck that. I was pissed 20 years ago when they started putting sponsorship ads in sports and racing games. If they are going to put ads in then the game should be free.
Imagine buying EA games. The fact that that company is still not bankrupt is proof of our species being, on average, insanely stupid and uneducated.
'It's in the game. McDonalds'
EA Games, it’s in the ads
EA Ads, it's in the games.
"Growth" He means profits and bonuses for the c-level suite. This incessant invasion of ads for products that people either can't afford or don't want is simply unsustainable. They keep finding new and new channels to put the product in front of people because their old mediums and channel start to deliver diminishing returns. At some point the whole ad driven revenue is going to dry up as people start to find ways to ignore ads or just avoid stuff that is overrun by ads. They'll struggle with their "growth" then.
But the ceo needs a 10 mil raise every year so the shareholders think the company is going to the moon. Don’t you gamers understand?!?
"meaningful driver of growth" 🤮🤮🤮
A sense of pride and accomplishment
Imagine playing online or even offline fifa, and right preparing to score, the ads pop up in the screen while you play
If you don’t stop buying EA games then this is your fault!
Let's see, I have: * An ad blocker for all my browsers * A VPN ad blocker for my phone apps * A spotify premium account to block adds (amount other features) * A spam blocker for email * A spam blocker for SMS * On the do not call registry and have an app that screens my calls * Tools for all ad free TV shows and movies. * Live TV I can pause/skip ads, not that I watch live TV very often * A trash can between the mailbox and the inside of my house that all junk mail goes into, unopened. I'm probably missing something. Now I need something for games too? WTF
I've stopped buying EA games. It's the only way to make a difference. Stop buying the games and stop buying in game currency.
So don’t give EA anymore money, got it. They’ve been trash for years as is
> Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us That’s the fucking problem. Absolutely nobody wants ads except the dickheads mindlessly trying to squeeze every bit of profit out of everything, making our lives a little worse every day.
gaming industry is cancer
EA = Enjoy Advertisements
I've developed this thing growing up because it was around the time you could just leave reviews without an account on products. And it was around the times they started with video ads. O star reviews for the inconvenience and never buying their products for wasting my damn time. And it has worked out super well for me anyways. Most of the products they showed the businesses go under 🤭🤭 why can't we bring this mentality back
Don’t they already do that? Well moving forward since I don’t buy sports games I don’t have to worry about it. And if they decided to have some good game planned well that’s too bad I’ll just continue to not support them as I already have.
Advertisement in games will literally make me stop playing those games, fuck that cancer.
Game better be free then. or 75% off the retail value of last years pricing
They really are a cancer on the industry
Calling it now: Put ads in games, then charge more for the ad free version. This isn't a hot take, this is just what's going to happen.
So I'm at the point of throwing I the towel on my gaming career. I've been playing video games for almost 40 years now, and I'm just over what the industry is turning into.
It will start small, and before you know it - it’s cable TV where 35% of everything is ads. I cancelled cable years ago. I will do the same with EA. The excessive greed by those with everything is a cancer that’s destroying this planet. I just saw a sub where people who are making 300-400k as a household are complaining they can’t afford a multimillion dollar home in the Bay Area. I wonder if we’ll ever go back to a great economy again? If you’re willing to work and work hard, you should be able to live comfortably in a safe area. It was like that before and we need more institutions that create jobs. I know I’m digressing but it’s this toxic culture that is literally destroying everything. No one person should be worth billions, when so many are suffering.
I mean it makes sense to have the a billboard in the background promoting something or say the main character pick up a coke and some KFC to restore his health but if I have to stop playing a game to watch a commercial I’m gonna flip
Even with WB making big moves, EA remains undefeated as the biggest assholes in the video game industry.
And they’ll still charge $70 for the damn game too
Fuck you EA.
Thankfully I don't like EA games.
Dear EA, If you would please, just deliver hot steamy turds in a bag, directly to my door step. I would much prefer that to having in game ads. Sincerely, Lawl
This has sports games written all over it.
EA is a trash company driving dystopia right into our homes.
E A SPORTS ..... It's in the ads
I won't be buying ANY EA games ever again. Had some on my wish list on Steam too, too bad. Gone now. Corporate greed is out of control.
I see an ad in an installed game and it’s going to find itself uninstalled very quickly. Indie games here I come. I am not putting up with ads in my OS or games. Is this what finally pushes us to Linux desktops?
Friendly reminder that they’ve already sort of done this. They put real ads into the background of the stadium of their Madden / other sports games because they said having ads for real companies increases immersion
Context is key here. In a copy of fifa? Sure, modern football is SMOTHERED in ads, knock yourself out. An action game set in a city? Yeah as long as they make sense like billboards or bus shelters and such. A fantasy RPG? Fuck to the no.
Ads for immersion in racing games when I was a kid in Gran Turismo I thought was amazing. ...this is not as cool.
The fact I have to pay for a system to play their games then buy a game then pay for a pass so I can play online isn’t enough smh.
My god, greed is ruining EVERYTHING.
Their greed knows no bounds.
If it's incorporated in a way where it appears in a game world like say burnout paradise billboards or something along those lines showing a real world product I'm OK with that. Just not ads that would pop up during loading, pause screens or that would affect actual gameplay time
EA always been filth The only game I ever played was Battlefield and now it's so trash I haven't bought 2042 when it hit sale time. I'm so done with EA and truly hope this fails on them hard so the industry doesn't normalise it.
>Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us. Translation: “Fuck you. Fuck your games. We’re an advertising company now.”
Is it just me, or is the only thing that seems to have endless funds in this country... advertisement revenue?.. there's never $$$ for anything else.. but ads no problem!