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Ads Retroactively Added To Wipeout HD, Soon Others
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?"
In your router. I'm looking at you DD-WRT.
Contact the ratings board and complain that the content of the game has changed.
The expression is "all of a sudden".
The people who say "all of the sudden" are the same people who say "could of" and "for all intensive purposes". You heard something that sounded to you like words you know but didn't apply the critical thinking part of your brain and ask "Does this expression make sense?".
Coming in the future ? It's already been done, and it's going to keep being done. This is nothing new and short of not buying games with ads or product placement, good luck getting rid of it.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Don't like the way they're treating you as a consumer? Don't buy their products - simple as that. Use the only real power you have as a passive recipient of their products: the power to stop being one. No one is forcing you to buy Super Testosterone Massacre III if you don't want to. You just have to want being treated fairly more than the latest shiny bauble. There are bigger things in life.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I would be interested if there would be a way to block these ads by looking at traffic and blocking the source at the router. I haven't seen anyone attempt that with the xbox360, but everyone assumed that was par for the course. It would be really interesting to analyze this, and the youtube video should really spark outrage at the ads. I mean the ads are actually degrading performance, they're removing value from the game, and they're very very intrusive. Not everyone has hours and hours and hours to play, and if i can only play for an hour and an add saps 10 seconds every few minutes from my play time, I'd be royally miffed.
Alas, not everyone feels the outrage at having advertising shoved down their throats. I know that newspaper and tv REQUIRE ads to continue to be made, but you can get 77 issues of the WSJ for 70 bucks. That's a little more than a ps3 or xbox game, but the game isn't something completely new every day.
Bottom line, if you use ads, you should either seriously discount your product (newspaper) or provide it for free (broadcast TV), but charging users full price for a game or a DL game and then reaping the benefits of the ads that reduce play time from a session and degrade performance (longer load time = performance degredation) is not right.
Real bottom line: If you want more money from your game, make a better game, its on the console so you can't bitch about piracy, so do better or lose my business. If you previously got my business and then wish to make money off of providing ads to me in a game that there were previously no ads, I will be asking for a refund and encouraging all of my friends to do the same. If you didn't tell me that there would be ads or allow me to decline the ads, expect a general backlash. (I hope)
Well, there goes one more sale.
I was about to buy that - the demo looks so good on my new HD monitor. But then they pull this crap...
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
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!
Contact SONY and ask for your money back. And if that fails, well, guess you could try to go SUE happy and start a class action lawsuit? After all, you bought the game without ads and no clue they were going to do this.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
I neither own this game or the console its on - but I'm assuming the game downloads its ad content from a single source.
Block it on your DNS or redirect it to photos (or videos) you'd like to see during the loading of a level.
This is a rather interesting turn of events.
wipEout was one of the first major games to feature in-game advertising of real-world products. The ads were very well targeted at the game's demographic, specifically Red Bull ads claiming that it improves reaction time.
These ads didn't adversely impact on the gameplay, in fact I'd say they enhanced it, as they added an element of realism to the game. Products that were aimed at the people playing the game, advertised on trackside billboards, just like they would be in real life.
Also, the idea of paying for ads isn't anything new. How many ads do you see on Pay TV? Ads at the beginning of movies?
Where this latest scheme seems to fall down is that ads unrelated to the target market are being inserted before you play a game, and they are increasing the load time of the levels in order to show the ad for a longer period of time. This is unacceptable.
I'm all for ads in games, especially if it keeps the price down (WipeoutHD isn't exactly and expensive game to begin with) but if it adversely impacts on the gameplay - if it takes longer to load a level, or I get popups that obscure important gameplay, I'm completely against it.
In summary, have ads on billboards or on the sides of vehicles, have them on loading screens, but don't download streaming media to use up my precious bandwidth, or don't increase the time the loading screens are displayed just to fit an ad in there. Also, if the game is subsidised by advertising, reduce the sticker price that I have to pay.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
or is there anything that can be done to hinder companies from adding advertisements retroactively, without the customer's prior knowledge?
1. Pass another law.
2. Let the market decide.
3. Boil the bastards in oil.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I just had a vision of the George Lucas / Steven Spielberg style special editions of games coming in the future. If I don't like the steam version of Half Life 1, I can pop in my original CD and play the game the way it was. This is the same way that I cam watch the original version of Star Wars, or The Goonies. With newer games, you won't have this option any longer, on console or PC.
Wait? You can pirate sony online store games/dlc now? link us up buddy - I don't mind ads in something I haven't paid for :)
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.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
According to ShackNews, this also increases the between race load times from 12 seconds to 20 seconds.
Now that's 'meeting advertiser demand,' thanks Sony.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/59821
Yes, because putting ads in a game is exactly the same as compromising a system at the root level and leaving it exposed to god knows what.
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.
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
"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?" Most importantly, stop buying products from people that have a track record of running over consumer rights. Providing them resources from your purchases will do nothing to stop behavior you disapprove of. Don't play the game if the ads bother you. To stop any more ad's coming in, I would think it would be easy enough to unplug the PS3 from the network. Or if you can't do any of the above, buy the game, play it, get the ads, and whine like a used bitch.
IGA, Double Fusion, and Massive (microsoft) all exist to place ads on and in game content.
I work from one of them, and i have good friends who work or have worked in the other ones. and im not saying witch.
They have been placing ads in games since the 90's, and more specifically the above mentioned company's have been actively placing ads in ALL current gen consoles. That "brought to you by sprint" ad inside the Wii version of madden is no accident, and many of these games are being coded with ad serving tech built in (not just static ads)...
In fact the above companies are working very hard to get as many online/live game ad impressions as possible... because they dont have to sell NEW inventory inside forthcomming games to make all their moeny (they can resell dynamic ads in current/old games).
these arent new, and theyll only get worse. The economics of it are stright foward, UBIsoft, EA, activision... all of them develop games and are giving proposals that reduce their R&D budgets with initial "sponsering"... A good (static) game will have 10 bifferent ad buys into it, each one can pull 100k to a million depending on placement and views. Considering the developers have a lot of games that dont do well, and cost them a ton... the ads help bring in revenue to pay for games that would otherwise cost them, and helps subsidize their AAA titles.
Nin is the least friendly to ad placements, and currently has no dynamic ad delivery capability
Sony is in between, IGA having extensive reach into their marketshare
And MS has their inhouse firm MASSIVE, which is SUPER friednly to ad buys, MS having devloped an entire ad network directly tailored for online ad delivery (Live). Live was NOT built for gamers... it was built for ads and cash flow.
Expect more ads to come, particuarly now when the above companies, and console makers are scrambling to bring in any revnue they can from advertisers who are spending less than before (who still view in game advertising as an unproven market).
This may be the most "brazen" currently noticed ingame ad, but it is NO WHERE NEAR the first, youll find that billboards in racing games and stadiums, etc... are already populated with real ad products (which i promise you were the result of ad buys). The iphone already has 3 substantially backed ad serving competitors delivering ingame/inapp advertising ("free" apps... no, not really).
and yes, im an AC.... srry, but one should fear the slashmob
Any players notice traffic to ad servers? Post the hostnames and people can just map them to 127.0.0.1.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That would depend on your perspective. If you consider the motivation behind both actions, they're pretty similar: a thorough disdain for the customer and for the consequences of the action.
And hey, let's face it, there were no real consequences to the root kit fiasco ($7.50 per claimant in a class action is peanuts for a crime which carries a maximum penalty of $100,000 per violation).
With money for the goal, how else did you expect to be treated? You will endure it just as the millions who endure television commercials, spam, and the rest of the world of business we've come to live in immersion with.
Imagine your world without money. The utopia you might imagine surely can't have anything to do with such a destructive force.
Yes, because putting ads in a game is exactly the same as compromising a system at the root level and leaving it exposed to god knows what.
I acknowledge that what you said there is accurate though I question its purpose. I just think the AC's point that "you as a potential customer should know that a Sony product has shown itself to be untrustworthy in these two different ways" is significantly more important than your point that "these two different ways were more different than the GP may have indicated."
Those different ways actually have quite a bit in common. Remember that the rootkit was a DRM device. So, these are two different expressions of the same mentality because each gives some benefit to a company at the expense of the already-paying customer. In light of that, are not the precise methods academic? Either tells me all that I need to know for my monetary decision-making.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
./'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.
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
For me to not feel guilty pirating games.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
Hop aboard the Wii bandwagon. They may have friend codes, but they don't throw ads on your dashboards and in your games. Wii online is a very clean service. You will never be swamped with ads about "Double Pits to Chesty" on the Wii menu.
This is slashdot. How many people actually RTFA?
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...
That the slashdottian righteous indignation is in full swing. My question to those of you perturbed by this is: Are you offended by the inclusion of ads or the non-disclosure?
There's a difference. Non-disclosure is foolish. Providing free patches, partially funded by advertising revenue to you is not.
I record my sleeptalking
Two
I never bought a Playstation 3, I kinda wanted too... but being from Sony, I knew they'd screw it up somehow...
But whoring out games people have already bought for extra cash is a pretty horrible way to advertise. Its one thing adding a pepsi machine to a game which one can throw around or break or what not, its another to try and make money off every loading screen....
"If you work in marketing or advertising, kill yourself. No joke here, just really, seriously kill yourself. You have no rationalization for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers...suck a tailpipe, hang yourself, borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence."
I don`t care if there`s ads or not, but they should not put it in loading screen, it is a video game but not TV shows. What they should do is put ads on the race track, don`t you see both Need For Speed and Burnout has ads everywhere except while loading?
I'm a little worried. Most people have "a pair" rather than "a set". How many do you have, exactly? Two? Three? Many? (/me glances over at a set of legos and then looks down.)
Thank you for the input sir! Your constructive criticism has rocked my post to its foundations, leaving me backpedaling and sputtering defensively. It shames me how I could have undermined my point so thoroughly with a single factual error.
I have re-written my post, after incorporating your revisions. As you can see, it is now barely recognizable when compared to the original, but it is my hope that the same spirit survives in them both:
I love the choice of words in the summary: the ads were "snuck in," as if the developers were accountable to a bunch of junior college fuck-ups on slashdot, and would somehow have to answer to the basement virgins if they placed advertising with a little more fanfare. Face facts fatties: you don't matter. Nobody snuck anything in, they just went over your heads because they're not interested in your input.
It also amuses me that somebody tagged the article "boycott." Your empty threats don't scare anyone. And I think it's well known at this point that the average slashdork has neither the willpower nor integrity to participate in any sort of collective action that requires any self-sacrifice.
Such human garbage here- a bunch of fat, goateed cubicle shit. You guys are some of the vilest hypocrites gathered on the internet.
I'm in the UK, played Wipeout HD with the 2.0.1 update and the Fury DLC last night, no ads there, although according to the Double Fusion press release from TFA it'll only be a matter of time unfortunately.
This is slashdot. How many people actually RTFA?
It might not bode well to be supporting a post modded flamebait but jesus. Really. THE SUMMARY dammit! Nobody mentioned the article! Not RingTFA seems reasonable, but not reading the summary is pushing it, and not reading posts?
Counterstrike added ads last year too such as movie posters which annoyed a lot of us as it's not what we wanted and paid for. They should offer options if they want to include ads such as no adds or ads plus 50% of next purchase etc for existing gamers and two retail versions, one of which will be cheaper due to showing ads. That way people will pay for what they want and have nothing to complain for.
If enough people tell these guys that you hate the lenghtened level load time in your favorite game and thus that you will avoid their product in the future they might listen, who knows?
That post was supposed to be a preview. I'd claim that I'm stoned but I've done it too many times anyway. ~:P
Quack, quack.
CowboyNeal?
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Heh, I usually click straight through to the article, didn't even notice that in the summary. Guess I'm kinda backwards for slashdot.
Wipeout HD sells for double the usual amount
"The usual amount" for a PLAYSTATION 3 game is $60 because "the usual" PS3 game is a retail package. So Wipeout HD sells for one-third the usual amount.
There is absolutely no excuse to "re-monetize" something like this
Basic cable TV costs money and has advertisements.
Repeat your request. Escalate the issue. Put it in writing. Repeat that cycle over and over again.
And then your credit report will likely brand you a "demon customer", other lenders will raise your rates (as they do in universal default), and your insurance will drop you.
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.
Say a 12-year-old is making straight A's and B's in school but is bored over summer vacation. What is the 12-year-old supposed to do?
Racing in general has traditionally been addled with corporate sponsorship. Look at F1 or NASCAR. Even the original wipeout had adds for red bull during loading. Personally, I could care less about adds during loading or even billboards in the game itself as long as it doesn't interfere with the gameplay or story.
Man, I am so glad I bought an XBox 360 instead of a PS3. Microsoft would never try some shady crap like this!
On a more serious note, I think anyone whose internet is limited in any way is adversely affected by this, as its forcing the download of content during offline play when there normally wouldn't be any usage.Sony, at the very least, should stop this from downloading the ads during single player. Beyond that, I can see a number of ways to logically conclude that Sony can't do this, but logic plays such a small part in the US legal system. What it really comes down to is that Sony will do whatever they want, as will MS and whatever other big corporations, because our government supports them. If this will ever really be stopped, it won't be until after we have a government that supports the people before it supports the dollar. I'm not trying to start a war here, but it's common knowledge to anyone who follows any part of cases against big corporations; unless there's some amazing discovery that the corporation is doing something completely illegal AND that discovery is made by a judge who truly is seeking justice and not just support for their own agenda, then the corporation will not lose.
In order to stop corporate America, you need to have more money than the corporations of America, otherwise the people in charge simply don't care enough to listen to you.
That people haven't mentioned the only way to effectively boycott these advertisements...
And that is to not buy the products or services which are being advertised. If State Farm or whatever bullshit company wants to advertise on your game, retaliate by sending that company a message by cancelling your insurance with them or simply not buying whatever product is put in front of you.
So, what's next? Can we look forward to fighting the Kool-Aid Man...
OH YEAH.... I hope so, I'd go after that bastard with a center punch or a slingshot with a pocket full of ball bearings.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
The entire software industry needs to get away from this "update" mentality. They won't until consumers demand it.
ISP's charging for data transferred above some limit is common and getting more so. And software products (OS, apps, games et all) already paid for eating into that limit costs consumers. Not everyone has >1M/sec with unlimited data!
The root of the problem is that people always want something more, something better, and any type of software firm is more than happy to keep creeping in so-called features and improvements, some "free" (actually a trojan for advertising, as appears to be the present case) or for considerable expense (so-called "office" software).
The mere existence of software patches and updates indicate the software was not ready to deploy at time of sale. Poor quality.
If you continue to buy such poor quality products, what do you expect?
It seems all too convenient for companies to disclaim any usefulness of the software in the so-called license agreement. And we all seem just to accept that. So what you are agreeing to buy is essentially nothing.
I have some land you can afford for sale on a nice warm Caribbean island - on condition you agree it is not ever guaranteed to be useful for any particular purpose - and I'll update it for free without warning or asking: it's gonna rain, new crap will grow in, the odd hurricane will pass by, old crap will clear out - major revision. Oh and I can revoke the land from you as it turns out you only have it until I make a major revision then you must pay again or get out. Any takers?
Sadly after so many years of being pushed around by the software giants and accepting - even relishing - feature-creep updates - consumers are likely to continue to accept such poor quality. The result is software will continue to cost too much to aquire and too much to develop.
The most gaming value for the buck seems still to be the stand-alone boxes which are isolated from the network. Atari 2600 boot time: near zero compared to any current console or computer. Updates: never. It just works.
Wait until the 'clouds' (cloud computing) come into commonplace. What's the motivation for clouds? Control the consumer and what he/she sees: Advertising. I am surprised advertising firms are not seen in similar light to some lawyers and politicians. But hey we all let the dentist tell us while under we might feel a small prick in our mouth but not to worry - and we don't worry.
Humans for the most part behave like a bunch of stupid lemmings so get used to it. Stop thinking and enjoy the ads. Or don't buy it.
Kotaku reports that the loading ads have vanished after popular uproar. Presumably the only remaining ones are just the usual trackside ones that actually make sense in a racing game.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Bowing to pressure, Sony has now removed the ads from Wipeout.
I guess game companies really want to become bankrupt; I don't see WHY anybody would want to pay for a game and then have to sit through ads.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
You might want to check the EULA you agreed to on installing 2.01.
They already say game content may change online and the game's rating will not cover those.
This is Sony having it's cake and eating it, too.
"This is Sony." should've been all the warning anyone needed. How many times are people going to let Sony screw them over before they quit buying Sony products?
--bornagainpenguin
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