In recent years, advertisements have become something exclusive to television and radio networks to appear in all types of content. And of course, that includes video games, where advertising has managed to find a very comfortable niche in free games. Playing for free in exchange for advertising seems like a fair deal to us, but advertising in paid games?
Pay for advertising
A few months ago, many users started a public protest through the networks in which they denounced the incorporation of advertisements in UFC 4 , EA’s famous fighting game. The game was dedicated to showing Amazon Prime Video commercials of few seconds in the repetitions of the combats, also including a banner on the ring canvas that appeared at all times of the combat.
The community immediately rejected this proposal, since they understood that after religiously paying the 60 euros that the game cost, receiving publicity in full game was completely inadmissible. Luckily, EA understood the players’ reasons, and weeks later released an update that would disable advertising forever.
History repeats itself in NBA 2K21
However, it seems that history has not served to avoid future problems, since 2K Games has decided to include something similar in its NBA 2K21 game. At the moment it happens in the United States, where users in the country are seeing how the preload screens are filled with ads that the user must consume in full because the game is currently loading the game.
This means that, in addition to the ad appearing, the player does not have the option to withdraw it immediately, so the action is even more intrusive if possible. Remember that NBA 2K21 is a game that costs 69.99 euros on PS4 and Xbox One, so receiving advertising after paying that amount is not something that makes any player funny.
In the videos published by Stevivir, you can see how the ad appears on both Xbox One and PS4, although they have also confirmed that it happens on the PC version.
Will 2K Games rectify?
Given the precedent of EA, which decided to remove the advertising of its game so as not to annoy users more, it would be quite surprising if 2K did not do the same considering the rejection it is having in the few hours of the discovery.
It is worth mentioning that the ads only appear in the United States at the moment, so perhaps the company has started a testing phase to see how the public reacted to the idea of placing ads at load times. Seeing how the story has developed, if so, we have no doubt that 2K Games will prefer to reject the idea rather than anger users around the world, so we will see how it finally ends. And to you, would it bother you to receive ads of this type after having paid per game?