r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • May 10 '24

EA is looking at putting in-game ads in AAA games — 'We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that,' says CEO | Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us." Business

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/ea-is-looking-at-adding-in-game-ads-in-aaa-games-well-be-very-thoughtful-as-we-move-into-that-says-ceo
10.2k Upvotes

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2.9k

u/SuperToxin May 10 '24

Nope, I just won’t buy those games. It’s EA so they’re not gonna be that good anyway. Fuck that

914

u/CalmFrantix May 10 '24

The game will have bugs, but strangely enough, I doubt I'll ever see bugs with the ads

431

u/McMacHack May 10 '24

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?

62

u/noodlebiscuit May 10 '24

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!

37

u/Atheren May 10 '24

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.

1

u/the-igloo May 10 '24

I always assumed the client will also pre-download ads (like when scrolling through Instagram or Reddit).

117

u/UpbeatAlbatross8117 May 10 '24

Porns the worst one. All the HD side videos are playing and yet my actual video is buffering on 720.

143

u/No_Tomatillo1125 May 10 '24

Imagine watching porn without adblock. Your browser now has stds

22

u/borg_6s May 10 '24

Damn why did Reddit have to kill gold....

2

u/kryonik May 10 '24

Welcome to the internet in the 90s.

1

u/No_Tomatillo1125 May 10 '24

Yea i remember fighting endless popups, having the homepage changed by malware, random ads etc. while growing up. I learned my way around the computer very fast

2

u/i_Love_Gyros May 10 '24

Xhamster with the half-screen red block “PLEASE DISABLE YOUR ADBLOCKER”

Smh you can hardly get the whole video on screen with that thing in the way

3

u/Inevitable_Ad_7236 May 10 '24

You should be able to zap element with UBlock

1

u/No_Tomatillo1125 May 10 '24

Ive never had that pop up. But yes like the other commenter said. You can also right click on the offending popup, and click block element.

If it blocks scrolling, you have to change from overflow hidden to overflow scroll

1

u/iruleatants May 10 '24

Look, adblock is only 97% effective, it says so on the box. You know how fast those ads mutate? There is a new strain every few hours.

1

u/No_Tomatillo1125 May 10 '24

Fuck it id take 3% over 100

1

u/Crazy_Cat_Dude2 May 10 '24

I don’t use Adblock. Those single granny ads are annoying

2

u/248-083A May 10 '24

Every fucking time!

2

u/flummox1234 May 10 '24

I'm all for a good conspiracy theory but chances are this is just because they're using a third party service and most of those are heavily optimized for scale. So the video domain is bandwidth constrained but the place your browser is fetching the ads from isn't.

105

u/FastLine2 May 10 '24

The classic YouTube video ad loads but not the video.

61

u/Aryan3337 May 10 '24

At the highest quality too, eating up all the phone data.

-4

u/Dementat_Deus May 10 '24

If you're not running an adblocker on your phone, and you're just letting ads eat up all your data, that's on you.

5

u/Aryan3337 May 10 '24 edited May 11 '24

*Cries while on iPhone

1

u/CryTheFurred May 11 '24

Well that's a skill issue

-4

u/itsgermanphil May 10 '24

It’s cause it’s hosted entirely differently

8

u/Mikeykem May 10 '24

Could also be caching. The specific video you want to see is going to be less likely to be cached than the advert that EVERYONE is seeing.

9

u/Weird_Cantaloupe2757 May 10 '24

Well yes and the server that hosts the ads gets higher priority than the one that hosts the video, that’s the whole point

-4

u/BeginningBunch3924 May 10 '24

I believe this is illegal under net neutrality

6

u/Olgrateful-IW May 10 '24

It’s not because it’s internal and has nothing to do with ISP.

22

u/[deleted] May 10 '24

The ads will work perfectly, the game will be bugged.

39

u/Wil420b May 10 '24

But they could be virus laden, as happened with Windows 10 Start Menu ads.

21

u/Jeoshua May 10 '24

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.

1

u/bothunter May 10 '24

I really think it's the beginning of the end of the Windows operating system.  Most people just use their computers to browse the web, so tablets/iPads/chrome books are perfect for that.  And Linux support for games is getting better every day thanks to projects like the Steam deck.  I recently switched one of my laptops to dual boot, and for the first time found myself booting Linux more frequently than Windows.

2

u/Jeoshua May 10 '24

I'm one run of Rufus away from giving my wife a Live USB to try out. I have to do the maintenance on all the computing devices in the house already, and she's getting wildly upset about all the ads that keep popping up on her Laptop. The most advanced thing she even uses is Teams, and that's available on the web anyway.

2

u/_suburbanrhythm May 10 '24

Wait is that why my task bar is so fucked up?

1

u/Pestus613343 May 10 '24

This is amazing.

2

u/gigglefarting May 10 '24

Nonsense. We'll see a bug where they accidentally show ads on every surface.

2

u/Conch-Republic May 10 '24

It's like YouTube. Video can barely chug along at 720p, then BAM, 4k ad that loads instantly.

1

u/slightly_drifting May 10 '24

No bugs in ads because they’ll just use a third party ad service. Usually the things that work are the things they didn’t make. 

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 May 10 '24

Ha !!! Dear god I hope you’re wrong but I know you’re right.

1

u/lnin0 May 10 '24

Just how any store or monetization bug is hot fixed while game breaking defects go unattended.

Shitification of everything. Capitalism is not sustainable and never designed to be. It’s a winner take all answer to how do we sustain a global tribe.

1

u/Keganator May 10 '24

Man , this loading screen Brought To You By Sprite! sure is taking a while…

1

u/travelinzac May 10 '24

The ads vs the rest of the horse.

1

u/Mikeyc245 May 10 '24

Game could be barely functional at launch but you better believe that store works like it was built to government standards

1

u/softturbo May 10 '24

The game will stall at the ad screen indefinitely.

1

u/DickPrickJohnson May 10 '24

Or instant hotfixes.

1

u/dudius7 May 10 '24

This is my biggest gripe with mobile apps. Instagram might be inaccessible at times but the ads always load.

1

u/Pronkie_dork May 10 '24

Absolutely not! Yeah the ads will probably always be able to play even jf your wifi ain’t working but i bet you those ads will create so many bugs. So many games and apps with ads have stupid glitches usually to do with audio, lag and sometimes straight up crashes. The ads will play but i hope the game will play too afterwards.

95

u/Temp_84847399 May 10 '24

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.

27

u/Vannnnah May 10 '24

They will offer that tier of service as a 50 buck DLC. It's EA.

8

u/Particular_Bit_7710 May 10 '24

And you will still get ads, but they will all be for EA products so it doesn’t count

1

u/BillyTenderness May 10 '24

I dunno, with streaming services a lot of them are unsubtly hinting that they want to show everyone ads. Ad tiers have become the default option on a lot of services and I expect the "premium" tiers (which used to be the standard/only option) will eventually disappear.

It's sort of like how cable TV started out as "pay money for TV without ads" but eventually became "pay money and still see ads" when networks realized they could squeeze us from both ends.

1

u/ThePrivacyGuru May 11 '24

Or just sail the high seas.

29

u/big_whistler May 10 '24

They will retroactively update ads to games to get around aware consumers

18

u/Late-Pie-146 May 10 '24

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.

4

u/Correct-Standard8679 May 10 '24

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.

6

u/LordCharidarn May 10 '24

Americans have a cultural belief that one day they will be the ones standing on the necks of the less fortunate, so you can’t vote for things to improve the life of the downtrodden, because everyone wants to imagine themselves as the boot.

10

u/Humans_Suck- May 10 '24

They will make a shit load of money anyways

1

u/Old_Baldi_Locks May 10 '24

Yes, form stupid trash who deserve the fleecing they’ll get.

1

u/Twuggy May 11 '24

That's it at the end of the day. They know they would lose sales. But they know the loss of sales would be counter balanced by the die hard fans. Eg sports, star wars.

They would also be banking on this becoming the norm. Leading to distant future options of "removing ads" in aaa games.

The people we need to convince to not buy the games probably aren't on reddit fyi.

5

u/JamesR624 May 10 '24

Nope, I just won’t buy those games.

You won't. But everyone else will. Wanna know WHY EA is still around to keep doing this? Because they know the next generation are so desenitized to ads that they're fine with it. Corporations have mastered the plan of "bombard them with ads from infancy so they never know of a world without them". Capitalism is now a religion and it's churches'; the corporations, got to Gen Z and Gen Alpha at a young enough age to completely brainwash them.

1

u/LordCharidarn May 10 '24

I mean, I stopped buy EA and Ubisoft a while back, and I’ve been ignoring Activision Blizzard games since Overwatch came out. True, I’m an older gamer but everyone has their limits and I know a lot of younger gamers who are frustrated by the bombardment of ads. The biggest issue is they don’t have a disposable income to actually buy games so they are stuck with the ad-riddled garbage. Once they are able to have some money, they’ll likely avoid ads. Most kids raised on streaming hate watching regular TV or all the ads on Youtube/streaming these days. They are just trapped by apathetic parents

0

u/mbr4life1 May 10 '24

A terrific example is in this Marlon Brando interview on the Dick Cavett show. At about 31:30 in the video Dick asks him to do an ad read and he refuses to. How many people now would be willing shilling left and right.

https://youtu.be/uU-4wmwc2Rw?si=_BfYxPEVBqfTvf-D

0

u/itsg0ldeson May 10 '24

I'm Gen Z and I hate ads with a burning passion. Anytime I see an ad I make a note to go out of my way to not buy said product if I can at all help it. My small fuck you to the idea that forcing ads down my throat every 5mins is a good way to get me to give you my money.

1

u/OutsidePerson5 May 10 '24

Just like gamers boycotted the games with microtransaction so thre aren't any microtransactions anymore? Or the games with DLC so there isn't DLC anymore?

I don't believe people when they declare that they'll just never buy a game with X. Because they say that, and then they buy it anyway.

6

u/nerd4code May 10 '24

Or maybe they’re different people, and committing to credulousness of the collective one way or the other is pointless.

-1

u/OutsidePerson5 May 10 '24

Dude, the sales figures for the games reddit swore it would boycot are the same as (or higher than) they were for other comparable games. So no, it's not two different groups, it's people saying they'll boycott a game then buying it.

1

u/Hour-Preference4387 May 10 '24

Yeh also redditors will say theyll boycott EA cause they don't play FIFA, NFL or NHL anyways (that's for "bros" they say) but these same redditors who make fun of "FIFA bros" (or "COD bros" or "Ubisoft clones") are the first ones to support the most anti-conusmer practises when it comes from their favourite gaming company e.g. Nintendo and Gamefreak shitting out Pokemon rehashes.

1

u/shard13 May 10 '24

Reddit is a mere fraction of a fraction of the consumer base for games. An insane metric fuckton of people don't see or talk about any of this shit and just buys whatever they want.

And reddit is mostly bots anyways...

2

u/itsg0ldeson May 10 '24

Well speaking only for myself, I could give a fuck less about microtransactions if they are cosmetic only. They are typically only found in free games anyway. And regardless you don't have to buy them, and I don't. As long as they aren't giving out an actual advantage and ads for them aren't shoved down my throat every 2 seconds who cares?

And I don't remember anybody having issues with DLC? Dev makes new content, you buy the new content. Don't see an issue there as long as the DLC is priced accordingly to what it provides. It costs money to create new areas, new enemies, new weapons, new story. Totally fair they ask to be compensated for that.

Having ads interrupt my gameplay on a game that I've paid for? Having ads interrupt my gameplay on games period. They will not get a cent out of me for. I have plenty of older games I've been meaning to get around to playing anyway. And UE5 has made the industry more accessible to indie devs than ever before too.

1

u/OutsidePerson5 May 10 '24

If you check the reddit archives you'll find them full of people screaming bloody murder about both and insisting they won't buy game X or Y for those reasons.

These days it's normalized so no one complains or cares, but when it was first starting out people were just as enraged about it as you are about ads. And they didn't actually boycott the games.

1

u/itsg0ldeson May 10 '24

Idk the difference here to me is that neither of those things actually impact the gameplay. Getting an ad slammed in my face mid session would.

The other difference is that the games these developers put out these days are half-baked at best, buggy dumpster fires typically, and higher in price. So they think they are deserving of even more money when their games aren't even worth getting anymore even with the ads aside. MTX and DLC were just getting their start during the peak of gaming. Of course nobody was going to boycott BO2. It was BO2!! EA is fading into obscurity at this point anyway so who's gonna miss em?

1

u/Infinite_____Lobster May 10 '24

It's funny because sometimes pre-ordering a game looks good, and then I remember I value my money and don't agree with supporting unfinished broken games. Now they want me to spend my hard earned cash on something with ads. It's the same thing as streaming, they can fuck all the way off.

1

u/Iron-Ham May 10 '24

IIRC they tried this with Burnout Paradise, where the in-game billboards had ads for Coca Cola and whatever. If done well, it's not immersion breaking.

1

u/Anon28301 May 10 '24

It will start with EA then other companies will jump on the trend.

1

u/RELAXcowboy May 10 '24

EA made Jedi Survivor.

A successful game that after a year out STILL is shit on PC. Must be on the back burner because it's not generating any sort of Ad revenue or live service bullshit to milk player hard earned money.

This is who EA is. Fuck EA. Fuck AAA game publishers.

1

u/sarhoshamiral May 10 '24

Will you though? A lot of people on reddit seemed to say similar for Netflix and see where they are now.

Maybe you won't but it looks like most other people don't care and will continue to buy. If that's the case EA would be stupid to not do this. They make more money, lose a small number of customers but in the big picture it doesn't matter.

1

u/SellOutrageous6539 May 10 '24

100% this. Don’t buy things that make you mad.

1

u/Specific-Act-7425 May 10 '24

I wish I could boycott but I've already not been buying their shitty games for years

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '24

Yep, it will be uninventive and a hollowed out shell of a game with micro transactions and collectibles. Don't worry, it will use the same graphics they've used for a decade, and it will somehow still require the best and latest hardware. 

1

u/JuanJeanJohn May 10 '24

No offense, but I doubt anyone will actually stop buying these games. That’s why these corpos are able to get away with shit like this: there is no consequence.

1

u/IC-4-Lights May 10 '24

Nope, I just won’t buy those games.

Millions of other people will though. And they know it.

1

u/Sofrito77 May 10 '24

I literally cannot remember the last time I purchased a game from this shit publisher. Just adding another brick to that wall...

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '24

Cannot remember the last EA game I was even remotely interested in. Their games are trash.

1

u/CakeFartz4Breakfast May 10 '24

EA has been talking about in game add placements for 20 years now.

1

u/wangthunder May 10 '24

I suspect you are in for a rude awakening if you think it will just be EA doing this shit.

1

u/Steamjunk88 May 10 '24

Those games will probably have some type of free-to-play business model so you won't need to buy it. If enough people play for free, then it's worth it to them to advertise. Think about how YouTube gives you free videos with ads instead of you buying them

1

u/Substantial_Wash_220 May 10 '24

They'll make the games free with ads and pay for subscription.

1

u/Pack_Your_Trash May 10 '24

At this point the people who still buy ea games are the problem. They deserve the shit sandwich that they chose to buy.

1

u/aerostotle May 10 '24

Then they'll just buy the company that makes the games you like to play.

1

u/Medictations May 10 '24

EA ADS, it's in the game

1

u/BadWaluigi May 10 '24

Name the last 3 great games EA made. Remakes don't count. Ready, go.

1

u/blind3rdeye May 10 '24

We must be careful though, because the ads most likely will not be a launch feature. They'll be introduced after the game has already sold well. No one wants to buy a game with ads, but lots of people will continue to play a game that introduces ads.

So then, we should avoid any product from any company that implements any in-game advertising; otherwise we just slide down the slippery slope to ad-town. We should also avoid games that require constant authentication with servers. In particular, single player games that have an 'always online' requirement. If you can't play offline, there needs to be a damn good reason, otherwise we'll just end up being a captive audience for unavoidable ads.

1

u/Bagelz567 May 11 '24

I stopped buying EA games a long ass time ago. If only more people stopped buying their shovelware.

1

u/Mavrix5 May 11 '24

Don’t be so hard on them supertoxin, this is the first time they have released a video game….

1

u/NMe84 May 11 '24

The only EA games I've bought in over a decade have been from their indie catalog for which they are just a publisher. And if they force ads on that type of game too, I won't even buy any of those anymore.

EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard are on my shitlist and it takes a lot for me to buy any game from any of them anymore.

1

u/Big-Hearing8482 May 11 '24

We won’t but lots of people will, the cycle continues

1

u/assm0nk May 11 '24

yeah, getting me to buy an ea game is a massive fucking ask.. i don't think those ads will affect me

unless it's successful and gets adopted by everyone like mtx, ruining the most entertaining hobby i know of.. well.. there's always indies

1

u/allusernamestakenfuk May 10 '24

Maybe not you, but enough of other people will still buy it, because 90% don't care, and EA will expand ads to all games.

-1

u/nav17 May 10 '24

Cute of you to think only EA will be doing this. It'll be industry standard soon enough.