Personalized In-Game Advertising In Upcoming Titles

Scythal writes "In-game advertising provider Massive Inc., acquired by Microsoft in 2006, has signed up or renewed contracts with several publishers, notably EA, Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, and Activision. Eagerly anticipated games like Need for Speed: Shift will feature the technology that continuously collects 'anonymous' information about users, sends them to the Massive database for analysis, and downloads advertisements to be shown in the game. All that happens insidiously, without the users' explicit consent and out of their control, which raises further concerns about privacy, security and quite frankly, customer abuse. Would you feel concerned about software that collects personal information and sends it so that you get more personalized ads in a game you paid for?" (More, below.) "The technology has already been implemented, and was present in older titles. For example, Far Cry 2, released in October 2008 by Ubisoft Montreal, had it. You could discover that if you cared to read the manual up to the last pages: 'This game incorporates technology of Massive Incorporated ("Massive") that, when activated, enable the presentation of in-game advertisements and other in-game objects which are uploaded temporarily to your personal computer or game console and changed during online game play. As part of this process, when Massive technology is activated, Massive may have access to your Internet Protocol address. Your Internet Protocol address, and other basic anonymous information, available to Massive are temporarily used by Massive for the general purposes of transmitting and measuring in-game advertising.' However, it seems the technology was not used at the time, for some reason. This time, be assured it will be. How are we supposed to react to something like this? Shouldn't it be called adware? And, gratified by the success of this technology, what would be the next logical step of companies like Massive? Wouldn't they seek new publishers and use it in other software?"

Comments

Yay!

[osu-neko]

If it means more money for the people who produce the games I like, so they can hire more coders, more artists, more level designers, etc., then great!

I don't object to the idea in principle. I think it's a great idea, actually. Only concerns I have circle around the degree of anonymity and security. But if those are issues that are handled well, then this is a good thing for me as a gamer.

Discount?

[silver69]

Easy solution, offer two versions of the game. One with out the ads and one with the ads but at a discount, say 50% off. Then let the consumer decide.

Re:How to fix this

[girlintraining]

So stick by your guns, and just say no. Else nothing will ever change.

Because that's been so successful in the past! So the 1% of the population that's actually computer literate enough to (a) know about this and (b) care won't buy their game. They won't notice. So how about Plan B:

Patch the game or setup firewall rules to block such communications, like via a proxy or some-such.

Or Plan C:

Reverse engineer the protocol, then poison-pill the marketing data.

Amazes me

[Maxo-Texas]

how much freedom and privacy young people are willing to give up.

I won't buy these-- for the first two decades I owned computers they were completely mine. Concepts like these weren't even considered *and* good games were profitable at the same inflation adjusted pricing levels (about $20 to $25 for a good game in the 80's).

I'm headed the other way on this train. I've been reducing cable and it's likely to go black in the next few weeks.

Cancelled my Guitar Hero 5 order

[kupekhaize]

Dear Activision,

I just found out you are one of the companies that are using massive's massively annoying advertising technology to deliver ads in game. This is unacceptable, I'm not going to pay $100 for a game where I am going to constantly have advertisements thrown at me.

I've just cancelled my guitar hero 5 pre order (which was going to ship out tomorrow). Glad I found out about this now. Just how many in game ads does it take to equal that $100? I don't know myself, but i bet you do. And its probably not a trivial number.

Here's a news flash. WE DO NOT WANT THIS CRAP, AND WE ESPECIALLY DONT WANT TO PAY FOR IT.

Re:Will not work.

[nmb3000]

People will just be playing on private battle.net servers

PvPGN is awesome -- I run a server at my school for a bunch of friends -- but to think that it will work with the new Battle.net that Blizzard is rolling out is absurd. At the very best it will probably be a year before they have a workable product (and if even then). Also, you have to consider that Blizzard knows very well about projects like it and will intentionally design the system to prevent private servers from being used.

After seeing what Blizzard did to bnetd and their new-found hatred for LAN play, I'd be willing to bet that cryptography will play a big part in the new Battle.net service. More than likely, anyone that wants to run a private server will have to do some serious work on the game client to get it to connect to non-Blizzard servers (as opposed to now where you just give the game your private server's IP address). The current Battle.net is a complete joke in terms of security making it easy to reverse engineer and re-implement. YCBYA that Blizzard won't make that mistake again.

Re:How to fix this

[girlintraining]

I'm sorry, but what right do you have to fuck with someone else's data like that?

It's not someone else's data. It's data from one machine which they have no legal control or right to sending data to theirs. If their servers accept and process the data, and no password, key, or other means of repudiating the data is available, there's no ethical quandry. The interface is public and the intent of the interface is to accept data from public (and unvalidated) sources.

This company is not in the wrong, they're just doing something that you don't like.

If you think you're right and I'm wrong, and I think I'm right and you're wrong, who do you think I'm going to choose? :\

It's one thing if they're tracking you without you knowing about it.

Ignoring the fact that this statement is entirely immaterial to the issue at hand...Really? So it would be okay for me to follow you everywhere you go in public, as long as I announced it to you? If I stood outside your door when you went into private areas like your house, and patiently waited until you came out in public again?

However, to go into someone else's system and screw with data...

You have assumed that data is being altered, rather than created. Oops. You're also implying that entry is forced, rather than explicitly allowed.

...when the only thing tying you to it is the fact that you want to play a certain game, that's wrong.

So the "rightness" or "wrongness" of something is dependent on whether a thing is done for pleasure or business?

Do you feel all forms of "vigilante justice" are justified?

That's a loaded question, so I'll equivocate instead: History has demonstrated that when all other forms of redress has been exhausted, "vigilante justice" as you call it, has proven an effective means of promoting social change. so-called "vigilantes" have been educating the general public and IT professionals for decades by uncovering and publishing security flaws, releasing proof-of-concept code, and demonstrating the necessity of validating input before processing it. What you call "vigilantism" is what others would define as a "public service".