EA Removed Advertising inserts from UFC 4 after Player Outrage

EA‘s advertising policy did not appeal to UFC 4 fans. After an avalanche of criticism from the gaming community, the publisher removed the ads that were shown in the middle of matches.

Three days ago, Reddit users noticed that during the showing of repeats in UFC 4, banners with the TV series “Boys” from Amazon appeared, the second season of which started the day before. At the same time, it was impossible to disable advertising.

Gamers turned out to be extremely dissatisfied with EA’s initiative — they paid a full $ 60 for the game, and three weeks after the release, intrusive advertising appeared in it. The players suggested that EA deliberately delayed the introduction of advertising, and this was reflected in the ratings of critics who reviewed UFC 4 even before the launch of banners.

A post on Reddit complaining about the spoiled gameplay collected 92 thousand “likes”, publications appeared on other platforms, a number of media outlets also did not ignore the situation.

In-game advertising is not a novelty either in the industry or in the games of the UFC series. Back in the spring, EA included test screenings of ads in UFC 3, in an attempt to find out how young people who don’t watch TV would react to it. But then the 15-30-second videos could either be turned off or watched for a reward. Users were not thrilled, but they did not complain about the game en masse.

EA has already officially commented on what happened with the new part of the fighting game and also noted in the message that advertising is the norm for the UFC franchise. Nevertheless, the company appreciates the feedback from players and is not going to embed advertising in replays in the future.

“A few days ago, the team turned on advertising in UFC 4, which appeared during replays in the gameplay. This type of advertising is not new for the UFC series, although we usually placed ads in certain tiles in the main menu or in the octagon in the arena,” the statement said.

“It is quite clear from your feedback that embedding ads during replays is not welcome. The team has already turned off advertising, and we apologize for the inconvenience in the gameplay that we caused to the players.”

“We understand that it was necessary to talk about this with the players in advance. This fault lies on our shoulders. We want to make sure that our players get the best possible experience from UFC 4, so embedded ads will no longer appear in replays.”

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