I already don’t buy Ubisoft games. Which of you spineless lukes is bankrolling this crap?
Gamers enraged at Ubisoft for injecting ads into the middle of video games
Submitted 11 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.techspot.com/news/100953-gamers-enraged-ubisoft-injecting-ads-middle-video-games.html
Comments
half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 11 months ago
chakan2@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Take it back…call it defective. Fuck that shit, I don’t care how good the game is, they’re not getting my money ever again.
Jaysyn@kbin.social 11 months ago
Yet another reason to continue my boycott of Ubisoft.
loobkoob@kbin.social 11 months ago
I wouldn't say I'm consciously boycotting Ubisoft, personally. But I sure as hell haven't bought one of their games for a long time, and with the way they've been going as a company in general, I can't see myself buying anything from them in the near future. If they do release something worth buying then I'll consider it, though.
ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My last Ubisoft title I didn’t get for free was AC4 I think. Chose a good time to drop off. Like you I’m not boycotting actively as much as I hate their practices and they have shitty games that all feel pretty similar after a certain point.
HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I started by consciously boycotting Ubi, but it became so easy, pretty much immediately, that I barely think it counts any more.
IHeartBadCode@kbin.social 11 months ago
but there's no good reason for studios to insert ads in the middle of a game
"Au contraire!"
— Ubisoft, highly likely.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
In other news: Ubisoft’s revenue are up 14% year on year in September
YeOldGrim@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I might be wrong, but don’t they plan or already do put anticheat into single player games so people don’t cheat-in the various ingame currencies they have to buy XP boosts (where without them leveing is a crawl)?
There thou art… The Big Three. Thy faces, AAA Publishers. Thy actions barely worthy of the name. Didst truly believe thy ploy would succeed? Dist believe Jolly Roger’s would not notice? Publishers thou may be, yet thou hast proven thyselves fools, every one. The supplication of Ubisoft. The whimper of Activision. The death mewl of Electronic Arts…
Jamie@jamie.moe 11 months ago
I discovered that when playing FarCry 5. I attached cheat engine to it to do some messing about and the game would force crash itself every time. Annoyed me that I couldn’t ruin my own SP experience
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
The marketer’s nightmare is that whenever you exploit a new vector to target consumers with ads, whenever you invent a new commercial style to which adults are responsive, you are simultaneously instilling resistance into their kids so they will grow up largely immune.
And if it’s particularly invasive or annoying (such as interrupting fun to ad at them) they’ll hate your company for the ads more than they like the product.
kromem@lemmy.world 11 months ago
To be honest, it’s only the smartest people in the ad industry that even talk about this big picture stuff.
My favorite version of the discussion was referring to shitty advertisers as the equivalent of polluters destroying the ecosystem.
And you see it over and over. Mobile banner ads when they first came out had a 15% CTR. Fifteen percent.
That’s insane.
But within a year of using them for irrelevant and crappy ads with lousy landing pages those numbers dropped dramatically and by now they average around 0.4-0.8%.
What both most advertisers and consumers typically don’t understand about advertising is that at its foundation, it’s something that’s intrinsically motivated for users.
When you know about a great product, you tell people about it.
When you hear about a great product for something you are in market for, you pay more attention to find out more.
That’s the natural inclination.
It’s just not the case in practice because for a century companies have tried to exploit that tendency to grab attention when they don’t actually deserve it, to lie about their products, and to generally poison the ecosystem beyond repair.
And it’s a prisoner’s dilemma, as the few companies that would like to be more responsible with their ad content and placement have competitors who throw caution to the wind and mess it up for everyone.
In practice, almost no one really thinks about the long term consequences of doing stupid shit with advertising that will cause consumers to ignore most of their future efforts. And you typically see a consistent small percentage of the overall advertising reach that converts (and the secret about this small percent is it’s mostly the portion of the population that’s highly suggestible that’s being taken advantage of).
TheEntity@kbin.social 11 months ago
If anything, I'd say the current kids are far more ad-tolerant than the, let's say, 90s "kids". The ads in games are normal to them.
CalicoJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
It goes farther than ad-tolerant, a lot of them enjoy the ads. They see them as a natural part of the content.
skyspydude1@lemmy.world 11 months ago
For real. I’m less than 5 years older than some of my wife’s friends, and they were almost awestruck that I have basically ZERO ads in our house. Every device has uBlock, Sponsorblock, ReVanced, SmartTube, whole house has PiHole and a couple of other things. And these are CS majors and engineers, so it’s not like they aren’t at least semi tech-savvy. They just accept the ads as if they can’t do anything about them.
But I say fuck it, because literally every content creator I like does zero sponsorship or ad deals, and they all manage to make fantastic content. I’ll give them $1000 via their Patreon or merch before I’ll watch a single ad for shit like Raycons or Raid: Shadow Legends. Ads are absolute cancer and the more ads you see for a product, the shittier it is, almost guaranteed.
Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are plenty of games in the wild these days, not to mention on my back log, that if this became common practice it’d probably be a good thing. Personally I’d focus on what I already own or retro. So, bring it on 🤣
Phale@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oooh angry gamers, so scary. Let me see a title saying “Ubisoft losing profit, it just won’t stop jesus christ!” Then I can get a NE out of this.
Jenntron@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Enraged gamer #40,679, can confirm.
Confuzzeled@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m mildly perturbed at best, where’s our headline.
ntma@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Gamers are the most oppressed cultural group.
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 had ads in it for a movie. I thought it was neat. But it wasn’t intrusive. The ads were on legit movie theater posters in the game for a movie.
FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I remember there was actually a pizza Hut commercial in a Playstation 1 demo disc. It was one of the Pizza Hut sampler discs.
Things are different now.
interceder270@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That was actually a solid deal because most people didn’t have game collections or exposure to a lot of great titles.
Whoever got away with putting Metal Gear Solid on one of the demo discs changed my life. It’s a shame we’d never see something like that in the modern day.
FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I miss demo discs. But going on YouTube and Twitch I think also kinda changed how people see what games they want.
Thanks to demo discs I got into Resident Evil 2, Tony Hawks Pro Skater, WWF Smackdown and few other games.
FoundTheVegan@kbin.social 11 months ago
I mean this is the same Ubisoft franchise that snuck in Denuvo as a day one patch. It'd be funnier if it weren't so upsetting that nothing will change and the game industry will keep chugging on.
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
From Ubisoft no less. I’m shocked I tell you. Shocked! /s
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Putting ads in a 5 year old game is definitely an odd thing to do.
Active player count got to be in the dozens by now, surely?
twisted28@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Coming soon to a theatre near you
xantoxis@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t usually care about in-game DLC ads or things like that, as long as they’re relegated to a Store section, but god damn.
This is too far.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Nice, I remember Admix just starting out and product placement in Guitar Hero
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Bunch of chumps would complain then immediately go buy the golden collector’s edition pre-order anticipated-access + battlepass bundle. If you’re that person, you deserve to be taken advantage of. The only reason they keep pushing the envelope of the shit they think they can get away with is because you keep paying for it.
tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Who is still playing Ubisoft games?
lorez@lemm.ee 11 months ago
No. I meant Rayman, even Origins and Legends.
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m enraged they made a Facebook sequel rather than a legit game to my wife’s favorite computer game ever, and it seems there no hope of the series ever coming back.
DragonWasabi@monyet.cc 11 months ago
I thought that this was an ad on Lemmy. Glad it’s not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do have ads just like Reddit
helenslunch@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Except for the ones that most certainly bought the game from this ad.
just_change_it@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ubisoft has been anti-consumer for a long, long time.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m so behind companies doing this because so many people accept ads in every other part of their life and then act surprised when they get more ads showing up.
just_change_it@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wish your method would get the results you want. I know way too many people who sit through ads for energy to play mobile games.
Coming soon is all the streaming video companies with advertisements on paid subs. Netflix has removed the cheap tier from new subs and replaced it with an ad tier. Amazon is planning on removing no-ad content from amazon prime next year. Pretty much every streaming company except apple has an ad tier or is planning one soon.
Advertisement is pervasive and honestly a huge problem. It should be prohibited from a huge swath of services, especially healthcare, but also as an optional thing on basically every platform. I truly believe ads make everything worse.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 11 months ago
The enshittification of streaming services has pushed me back to sailing the seas.
And I plan on sharing all that I have with anyone who wants it.
An additional insult is publishers or authors changing their old stuff (Terry Pratchett is re-editing his old novels, the old Bond books are being edited because the language is “offensive”, etc).
I’d like to maintain my own library of un-altered stuff.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It gets crazier to me when I start counting how many minutes of my day is spent being advertised too. I get ads on the radio to work. I get ads in the song themselves because DJ deEzNutz took a deal with McDonald’s to include a hook where he talks about those two sweet beef patties. Meanwhile I’m staring at every billboard one the way to work. I see all the signs on the bus stops. I see the ads on the bus themselves. Hell I get 8 hours between work and bed. How many of those are spend watching a commercial. This is such a wacky situation and I feel like Rowdy Piper in ‘They live’.
interceder270@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s so sad because these people could block those ads and use free streaming services.
Blokada 5 blocks adds in apps, but you have to sideload it from their website because Google blocked all apps that use Blokada’s functionality from the Play Store.
Here’s a free streaming service to watch pretty much anything for free, just make sure you have Adnauseam or uBlock Origin installed: fmoviesz.to
The problem is that we, as a culture, don’t pride ourselves on saving money. We pride ourselves on getting taken advantage of because that’s what everyone else is doing. Useful idiots and tools are the norm. They get mad whenever someone rises above their stupidity.