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?"

Comments

Re:Greed knows no limits

[causality]

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.

Mods,

This isn't off-topic, so I say to you: have the courage to post a reply and explain why you believe parent is wrong. The inability to do that is what causes the need to censor. The inability could be because you know he's right and want to shoot the messenger. It may also be that you disagree and yet you sense the weakness of your position. Both are cowardly. This post about greed and business can't be off-topic for this discussion. That's obvious unless you think this sort of bait-and-switch advertising is an act of altruism that we are discussing. If you believe that, I really want to see you try to make the case for it. Good luck with that.

I hope no one thinks I'm bothered by a misuse of the Slashdot system. Yeah, that's annoying but trivial. Rather, I prefer not to see even anonymous people like this moderator make such an unflattering statement about themselves. There's a million ways the individual can do that; the moderation system is just easier than most.