Players report that they are seeing ads for the latest installment Mirage in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – in the middle of the game. Developer Ubisoft confirms this advertising but also states that it should not appear at all. The ‘error’ is nonetheless causing frustration: gamers are now wondering if they soon need an ad blocker for their games.
What’s the deal with the advertising?
- Players who pause older parts of Assassin’s Creed can reportedly see ads while loading menus.
- A user on X, formerly Twitter, shows a scene from Odyssey: there, he is currently pulling up the map and receives an offer for -20% on the new Assassin’s Creed: Mirage for Black Friday.
- The advertisement is displayed across the entire screen and in the middle of the game. You must actively close it to continue playing.
This is what Ubisoft says: The reports about the advertising have spread quickly. In a statement to Eurogamer, Ubisoft has spoken out about it. The statement reads:
[This advertisement] is the result of a technical error that we fixed as soon as we were made aware of it.
On Reddit, the topic is widely discussed and is currently one of the largest threads in the general gaming subreddit. There, users believe that the appearance of the advertisements may have been a bug. However, their existence surely is not.
“We cannot accept this”
With over 1,400 comments, hundreds of gamers are participating in the discussion. The outrage over the new idea of displaying ads in games is enormous – but so is the outrage over Ubisoft itself.
Ubisoft has recently made negative headlines for allegedly deleting accounts if you don’t log in for too long. The company has also lost respect before, for example with its stance on unpopular NFTs.
Now users see a new low being reached. They say: “Such a thing cannot be accepted. Such advertising in the game is for me the reason to uninstall the game and write an ugly review.”
Others say they would return the game directly – whereupon a user comments: if companies do this cleverly, the advertising will only come after the return period.
The mood is extremely negative. Even if this is a mistake, players now predict that this is all just a “testing the waters”.
Ubisoft and other companies want to find out how bold they can be before gamers lose their patience: “The companies have shifted from ‘How do we improve the user experience’ to ‘How do we squeeze the last drop of money from customers before we lose them?'” A similar discussion recently took place regarding Diablo 4:
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