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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?"
Contact the ratings board and complain that the content of the game has changed.
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)
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.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I think you might just have a case here for the ultimate retroactive boycott: the credit card issuer chargeback.
I've just spoken to American Express Australia and have been told that I have no grounds to dispute this. Apparently, digitally distributed content is considered a service and not a product, so the same protections don't apply.
Moreover, I was told that unless I had - in writing - something that stated that no advertising would be introduced, I can't raise a complaint. Incredulous, I asked the support person if that mean that unless I had written evidence they wouldn't include hard core pornography in my game, I'd have no grounds for complaining about them introducing it. She replied that with services, this was indeed the case.
Next call: Sony!