Ads Retroactively Added To Wipeout HD, Soon Others 299
An anonymous reader writes "American users of Wipeout HD might have noticed that there's an advertisement showing up all of a sudden during loading, both during online and offline play. This, according to a poster on the well-known gaming forum NeoGAF, is being done covertly. The writer suspects that the display software was installed during update 2.01, and the ad-content is now being snuck in. Gamasutra has a story on the company responsible for the software to deliver these ads, Double Fusion, which said it plans to launch in-game advertising in 'another handful' of PS3 games by the end of the year. So, what's next? Can we look forward to fighting the Kool-Aid Man and zombified Mars bars in Uncharted, or is there anything that can be done to hinder companies from adding advertisements retroactively, without the customer's prior knowledge?"
Re:Ad blocking (Score:4, Insightful)
This is only going to work if the ad server is not on Sony's delivery system.
And here I was planning to buy the DLC this week. I'm seriously reconsidering that idea. :(
I think if we want to protest this, refuse to buy the expansion release. Unfortunately the reality is you'll likely end up in the minority as most of the sheeple out there don't care enough to fight this.
Boycott (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Guitar Hero World tour had ads also (Score:5, Insightful)
Some ads and product placement make sense in the context of a game. In sports stadiums or racing tracks, they may even ad realism. You just have to do it right.
But a video during a loading screen -- and worse, making it ten seconds longer? That's NOT acceptable.
Re:Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the summary?
How do you boycott something when the advertisements show up several months after you've bought it?
Re:ESRB (Score:0, Insightful)
so long as it is not offensive, what's the issue?
Wipeout HD = cheap to buy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Making money on my dime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the internet backwater country we call Australia we get a limited amount of bandwidth usage quota.
Every time the PS3/game downloads advertisements it uses my limited quota...
If I run out of quota I either have to buy more, or suffer 64kbit shaping...
And I consider myself lucky, some ISP's charge 18 cents per meg when you go over your quota without the ability to buy more.
I don't mind ads in web pages, or even sensible advertising in online gaming because they constantly require money to upkeep - but a game I've PAID FOR download and am playing OFFLINE doesn't cost the provider a damn cent!
Re:Wipeout HD = cheap to buy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask for your money back .... (Score:2, Insightful)
GP has not bought or played this. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the game were free, sure, ads would be completely permissible. But your standard $9.99 game on the PSN should be supported by the purchase price, and as you point out, Wipeout HD sells for double the usual amount, making it a premium PSN title. There is absolutely no excuse to "re-monetize" something like this, especially in such an intrusive way as increasing the load time for levels by an appreciable amount of time.
I think this may be one of those few cases where a credit card issuer chargeback is in order. They sold you something, then messed it up. Enough people do this, and you can be sure Sony will write a proscription of sleeper-ads into their new studio license agreement.
Re:Ad blocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. I'd estimate in my experience for every 20 or so people who say "Screw them, I'm not buying that", 1 will actually follow through.
I've boycotted a hell of a lot of games over the years due to copy protection, greed of the developer etc... I realise my boycott makes no difference to the company. But it does make a difference to me.
Sony will make more money from the advertising than they'll lose from disgruntled customers sadly, until such time as the consumer at large grows a set and stands up to say "Enough".
Re:ESRB (Score:5, Insightful)
so long as it is not offensive, what's the issue?
The point is that a change to the game's content could make them have to go through the ESRB review/rating process all over again, causing delays and maybe additional expenses for them. It'd be a way of making it a bit more of a hassle for them to assume that the game you bought with no such advertisements has now become a billboard.
I think ESRB makes an exception for "online play" (I'd speculate this is because of the difficulty/undesirability of censoring the other players) but it seems there were changes to offline play as well.
Creativity (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what's next? Can we look forward to fighting the Kool-Aid Man and zombified Mars bars in Uncharted
If they were to start advertising like that, I think it would be welcome in a sense. I don't like the idea of a fullscreen ad taking up my screen when the game is loading (although it's not as though I have anything better to look at while loading).
If companies got really creative and were to add in special characters that pop in from time to time it could be more entertaining and feel less like they were cramming advertising down my retinas.
Picture a giant Sour-Patch man skateboarding as a competitor in a Tony Hawk Game. Or a Coca-Cola bottle skiing down the hill in Winter Sports 2.
Entertainment and advertising all combined into one may be fun and enjoyable. And may upset less people here at Slashdot.
PLEASE MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you might just have a case here for the ultimate retroactive boycott: the credit card issuer chargeback.
They sold you a game. Then they added a double-dip, "secondary monetization" to what you already paid for. I'd call up MasterCard and see if they've got your back on this.
Honestly, the studio or publisher that did this needs to get hit hard. Ads are for freeloaders, not for paying customers.
From what I understand, chargebacks are a pain in the ass for retailers. They're also one of the few scenarios where the deck is stacked in the favor of you the customer. That's because the merchant really wants to be able to take $MAJOR_CARD but you as the customer can choose among several major credit cards. A small percentage of affected people doing this really would get some attention, methinks.
Greed knows no limits (Score:4, Insightful)
To be simple, greed knows no limits except those limits imposed by morality and by law. And in the case of modern business, there is no such thing as "morality" and so law is the only limit recognized by business. To be clear, unless laws are present to prevent it, 12 year olds will make your clothes and shoes in factories as can be demonstrated even today. Without laws, there would be billboards covering ever scene and location imaginable. I have no doubt that business would have no problem playing ads in your dreams if it were technically possible, and of course, legal.
There is nothing more important to modern business than money. Nothing. Not quality. Not human life. Not nature or the environment. All of that has been lost. It would be nice if that sort of morality could return, but I just can't imagine how. The story of how it was all lost would be an interesting story to hear. I just know we had some morality at some point and it was lost... I feel the loss.
hosts.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Any players notice traffic to ad servers? Post the hostnames and people can just map them to 127.0.0.1.
Re:GP has not bought or played this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Kneejerk reaction (Score:1, Insightful)
./'s reaction has 'kneejerk' all over it. Fox News kneejerk.
Games have had in-game advertisements for YEARS and nothing bad has ever come from it. Some as blatant as in WipEout HD. Some games even paid the companies to advertise in the games - Guitar Hero and Rock Band jog your memory a bit?
Hell, if anything WipEout is a fantastic example. Ever since the first one came out on the PSX it was inundated with in-game advertisements for stuff like Red Bull and other Psygnosis games. This was before the internet was put on console games, now it's no different (only now the advertisements can change - OH NO THE WORLD'S GONNA END WE GOTTA PROTEST SONY BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT).
Calm the fuck down everyone.
Re:ESRB (Score:5, Insightful)
I rather think if this were a game I had already paid for, sans ads, that suddenly started showing them I would find the change quite offensive.
Re:doublefusion (Score:3, Insightful)
And I don't recall Live originally having ads. In fact, I don't remember any ads at all on the Xbox 1.
The most "brazen" example of in-game advertising I've seen is 1 vs. 100, but that's understandable as the game is "free" (besides the Live subscription). Although it remains to be seen if they will charge for the full version. Seeing as how they seem to be making the game more buggy as they release more builds, I have a feeling it may be in beta for a while yet. I'm also a bit confused and quite a bit annoyed by their advertising plan: run the same ads over and over again each half hour, and only add more ads from the same companies.;
Yeah, it sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's jarring, breaks the style of the game (old-school dollar bills for State Farm?), and sucks when you've bought both the game and the Fury update (Mirror's Edge costs less). This is the natural outcome of having a closed system that allows people to reach in and screw with things you've already "bought."
Of course, I also have an iPhone and iPod touch...
Re:ESRB (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Creativity (Score:4, Insightful)
Picture a giant Sour-Patch man skateboarding as a competitor in a Tony Hawk Game. Or a Coca-Cola bottle skiing down the hill in Winter Sports 2.
To me, that would nonetheless totally ruin the game experience. If I feel I'm being expoited by the ad department, I find it hard to concentrate on having fun.
Re:Kneejerk reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not so much that there is advertising in the game. It's that a game that's been out for a year and is premium-priced on the PlayStationNetwork Store "all of a sudden" had commercials added via a nearly automatic update. To add insult to injury, said commercials are adding to the load time between tracks.
So if the game came with ads in the first place, then that would be one thing. I'd argue then said game should either the regular PSN price or slightly lower, but that's another story.
But if you buy a game and all of a sudden they patch it so it has ads/commercials then that's aggravating.