Hellgate Beta's In-Game Ads Raise Eyebrows

ari wins writes "IGN.com has up a post discussing the new EA/Flagship game Hellgate: London, and the in-game advertisements it includes to facilitate targeted marketing. Though ads in games aren't exactly new, some Beta testers are objecting to their apparently off-putting presence. Users have also noted that accepting the game's EULA means you submit to the collection of 'technical and related information that identifies your computer, including without limitation your Internet Protocol address, operating system, application software and peripheral hardware'."

Comments

Re:wtf

[SeekerDarksteel]

1) Your character is not gimped. You don't get certain online only options like shared stashes, guild creation, or the same number of character slots.

2) Not subscribing does absolutely nothing to the single player. A single player game that is good enough on its own to justify the cost of the box. In addition you get free online play even if you never play another dime. I seriously think that if they offered NO free online play, instead saying you can play single player on your own or pay a subscription for online, that there would be less people pissed off.

3) The subscription replaces having to buy expansions every six months or a year. Look at WoW. $15 a month, plus $50 a year for an expansion, plus no single player. And you don't hear anyone bitching about that.

4) You clearly haven't seen the ads. They are far from invasive. You can play through and never even notice that the ads on the subway walls are for real products. They aren't bright neon signs that scream "BUY COKE, MMM COKE." They're dirty worn down subway ads you'd expect to see in a subway. Only they're for actual products. I don't like the precedence either, but it's definitely not a gamebreaker.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[arivanov]

In countries that do not have suitable retail legislation (UK) you should buy via mail order or over the Internet. That gives you a 14 days by law to decide if you want to shovel the item back up the retailer's backside. Similar laws apply in most of the EU as a part of the distance selling regulations.

Re:This CAN be stopped

[KDR_11k]

The EULA is between you and the publisher, not you and the store. If the store says "we don't take returns" then the EULA can't do jack shit about it. You could try getting the publisher to refund you or you could contest the EULA in court somehow because you weren't presented the contract before purchase and won't get your money back once you read the contract. Not sure that'd work though.

Re:Spying

[illumin8]

I do mind giving EA and Flagship blanket permission to examine everything on my computer. READ what their "agreement" says -- they can mine your computer for whatever data they want, and give/sell it to whomever pays for it.

This is such a non-story, it isn't even funny. Talk about blowing things out of proportion. Their agreement gives them the right to do less than Google has the right to do every time you make a search. What's more, they even promise not to use your individual data in any way. It is only used in aggregate form, pretty much like Google. Check this text, from the very agreement (emphasis mine):

EA and/or the Related Parties may also use this information in the aggregate and, in a form which does not personally identify you, to improve our products and services and we may share that aggregate data with our third party service providers.

I've been playing the beta the last 2 weeks, and I must tell you, this game pretty much rocks. It's like Diablo 2 met Halflife 2 and they had a baby. A demon spawned, zombie killing, FPS if you want to or hack-n-slash or pew-pew with spells if you want to, clickfest of a game. This game is like Diablo 2 in full 3d on crack. It is about as addictive as crack, and you're going to be hearing a lot about it over the next couple weeks.

Re:Unobtrusive

[illumin8]

I'm in the beta, and the NDA just lifted yesterday, so here are some screenshots. The ads are very unobtrusive. The game takes place in London, 2038, after hellgates have opened and demons have killed 99% of the people on the earth. So, having posters appear on the walls of dirty, blasted out subway tunnel walls fits in very well with the theme of the game. The posters are so dingy you can barely read them unless you look close, and it matches the post-apocalyptic feel of the game to see ads from the "past." Judge for yourself:

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3

As far as the gameplay goes? This game totally rocks! Imagine if Diablo and Half-Life 2 had a baby. A demon and zombie infested, mutant loot pinata of a baby... Basically, you can hack and slash if you want to, pew-pew with spells if you want to, or shoot guns like an FPS if you want to. It's Diablo in full 3d, by Bill Roper and most of the guys from Blizzard North that created Diablo 1 and 2. There is single player and online multi-player. The online multi-player is instanced like Guild Wars, where only the towns are public. It's one hell of a lot of fun, and completely addictive, just like the original Diablos were. Imagine Diablo with full 3d, a physics engine, and exploding barrels ala HL2.

I think you're going to be hearing a lot of good things about this game.

Blocking ingame advertising

[Cecil]

For anyone who's interested in blocking ingame advertising, I'm sure it will end up being a rapidly changing arms race as usual, but for the moment, blocking the following IP ranges is sufficient to kill updated advertising and privacy-invading "impressions" tracking from both of the major ad providers (IGA Worldwide and Massive Inc)

38.119.38.0/24 (Massive Inc)
65.55.179.0/24 (Massive Inc)
72.3.184.144/28 (IGA)
72.32.5.0/28 (IGA)

Massive does lookups on the domain madserver.net (imp.madserver.net, media.madserver.net, z.madserver.net, etc ad nauseum) to get its IP addresses, whereas IGA seems to use hardcoded IPs (there is no reverse-lookup for them either, although they are hosted by rackspace)

The massive blocks are enough to block advertising and impressions data for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as SWAT4 and does not seem to have any effect on gameplay. They have been confirmed with tcpdump. The only other network activity (besides multiplayer) are simply checking for updates and registering with the master multiplayer servers at
demonware.net.

I am not so sure about the IGA blocks, that's mostly just information from forum posts, since I don't have Battlefield 2142 there's not much I can do to test it. Your milage may vary.