Sony removes naughty WipEout advert News

That was quick.. I only just read the news article complaining about this :D

Good move by Sony. But It's a shame that neither of the companies who are actually making money from these adverts pulled it of their own accord first. Adding adverts into a game you've already sold is a pretty lame move, but then waiting until Sony come and slap your wrist for degrading the game before doing anything about it is even worse.

Aye me too. Shows that they actually care about the gaming experience per se. Maybe they didn't know the ads that double fusion were placing in the game were too long and extending the loading times?

It ruins Wipeout's futuristic tone when you have an advert for a bank in the middle of it. I didn't mind the old advertising billboards around the tracks, but simply placing a big advert on the loading screen is something I do not want. Games with adverts like that are generally released for free.

Am perfectly happy to have adverts in a game that's free-2-play since it has to be paid for somehow but in a game that I have paid for, fuck right off!

Good swift response. But a pity it took public scrutiny for it to happen.


@Pirotic (edit: and others talking about refunds)

"Adding adverts into a game you've already sold is a pretty lame move"

Please lets not let this discussion degrade into artificially binary "paid for or not paid for" statements.

The amount you pay for a game varies, the amount the game costs to make varies, the amount that games makes from sales varies, and the costs that may or may not be recouped from in game ads vary.

Its a complex business, far more complex than a discussion that sits on terms like "I've paid for the game already so it should be ad free".

I didn't see any adverts when I bought this over the weekend, I presume it's just for the US version? I'd be happy with a siuation whereby the game was free with adverts or at least cheaper but then normal price without adverts. At least then we'd be able choose. I also agree that it has to fit within the theme of the game which is very important in a game like Wipeout.

How much did WipeoutHD cost?

"I'd be happy with a siuation whereby the game was free with adverts or at least cheaper but then normal price without adverts"

A good suggestion.

wow that was quick, good job Sony for binning it.

now remember


free games = advertise as much as you want
paid for game = no fracking advertising.

I love Wipeout. I love the PS3, it's entrance into the house having rendered the 360 almost obsolete. This, though, is a load of crap.

"Its a complex business, far more complex than a discussion that sits on terms like "I've paid for the game already so it should be ad free"."

True. I'm not a big fan of in-game advertising and IMO it would be great if the industry would draft a sort of code of conduct related to it. An article in such a code could be to make it clear to the consumer upfront that the game he/she purchases will feature advertising so that the consumer can make an informed buy decision.

I don't have an issue with ad-supported games as such, if it means we're getting the game free (QuakeLive) or at a reduced cost. It's a win-win solution - the customer gets a free/cheaper game, and the publisher gets a longer-term form of financial income.

The issue here is that it was added post-sale, which is rather low. It's irrelevent if the game was only £11.99, people didn't pay £11.99 for an ad-supported game. There needs to be greater transparency regarding issues like this.

They had adverts, must admit I did not even notice, anyone know what they were advertising??

Ads in games is a total disgrace, there is no excuse or reason for them.

Except when it's a situation where advertising adds to the realism, hoardings at the side of the pitch on football games, race tracks etc.

"Its a complex business, far more complex than a discussion that sits on terms like "I've paid for the game already so it should be ad free"."
Er, no, it's that simple. I bought a game without ads, for a price scee set. Please don't fill it with ads now. Especially, as someone said, ones that ruin the futuristic feel of the game.

If the ad effects the game experience then thats bad.

But I don't see why people complain about adverts in games they've paid for, there are ads in everything else you pay for, at the start of movies in the cinema, on SKY & Virgin TV, hell half the clothes we buy are little more than adverts.

If it doesn't effect the experience I don't see the problem. I just see it as more money towards developing games and keeping the cost down for the consumer.

Viper, that's Zone mode...

I hate paying for movies dvd/bluray then having to watch the adverts at the start. I was watching the WallE bluray with my son the other day and it took more than a minute to get to the main menu and I was thinking that if I had pirated the movie then I wouldn't have to put up with the bullshit.
Advertisers are not happy until they can fill ever available space and every moment of your time with their "branding".

@MilkybKid1985

You know, just once it would be nice for a discussion to take place on here that didn't contain a single "so you are saying..." question, that is swiftly followed by a ludicrous example.

Case in point.

"So you are happy that the game you are playing can one day patch up and force you to watch an advert with each loading screen, even offline SP?"

No. Next question.


"I know its an ott suggestion but its an honest question"

Well it might be a fair question to ask if you has started the sentence "Would you...". But front loading it with the old favourite "So you would...." is something else entirely.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your questions, as they all boil down to the usual strawman tosh.


This is my stand point. So please don't follow this with any more "So you are saying..." business. The way to tell what I am saying is to read my own words, and if I've not said it... well, I've not said it.


In-game advertising is a way to create revenue for a game. Another way to create revenue is to charge players to buy the game. There is perhaps a middle ground where some revenue is generated from each channel.

If either approach affects the experience of the player negatively, that is a bad thing. And if a publisher does indeed negatively affect the player experience, players should let them know. If they fix the issue, say thankyou. And if they don't, avoid buying the sequel and tell the publisher why.


"Paid for game" is not a binary state. "Paid £5 for a game" is. "Paid £50 for a game that will never contain advertising" is as well. See? Lots of options.

I don't have an agenda here, I'm not saying badly placed ads in games a great. If you assume I am saying that, then perhaps you will feel personally sleighted and set out to trash what I am saying.

No doubt if you set out to create some nonsense extreme that is clearly shit for gamers AND pretend that is my actual standpoint in order to undermine what I am saying, you will suceed. But you won't have actually achieved anything other than to stifle discussion of a complex subject. And you will then sit happily in your tower, feeling like you made a difference.

/that got a bit stroppy at the end, but I hope you take my point.

But I don't see why people complain about adverts in games they've paid for, there are ads in everything else you pay for, at the start of movies in the cinema, on SKY & Virgin TV, hell half the clothes we buy are little more than adverts.


In those examples you know about the ads at the time of purchase and can make a purchasing decision based upon that.

@mr_ruberfon

"Especially, as someone said, ones that ruin the futuristic feel of the game."

Really? Are we saying that in the future, there will be no advertising at sporting events? I am of the mind that well placed adverts (not this particular case in point) can improve the realism of a game or film. Badly placed ads obviously don't, but there is a difference between those two examples that many struggle to spot.

EA have been doing this for years. NFS and Burnout Paradise do it, and people weren't up in arms about those.

pretty sure this is US only anyway, i have been playing it quite a lot since fury came out and have seen no advertising,

Why are there ads in a game that you have to buy to play? Seems a bit unfair to suffer trough watching ads while the game loads.

Why are there ads in a game that you have to buy to play? Seems a bit unfair to suffer trough watching ads while the game loads.

it's hardly suffering now is it!!! If it makes the load times longer then that's a problem, but other than that it's just the load screen you can just look away from the screen if you find the ads that offensive.

But Wipeout has always been around the yar 2100 or so, right? What kind of contemporary ads do fit in that setting? Just as much as I don't want to see Coca Cola bottles in my medieval fantasy RPG, I don't want Ford Fiesta ads in my futuristic racing either.

@ kangaratoo - we'll probably be fed ads directly to impulse buy part of our brain or something in the future, but a current ad looks silly in a game set 100 years from now.

Coca Cola has a few thousand years left in it yet, I'm sure :)

@ kangarootoo

I agree with almost everything you said - especially when dealing with strawman arguments....

But I think the main objection here (which I think you are also implying you object to) is that in a paid-for game that previously had no ads, to have ads introduced that then have a detrimental effect on user experience is A Bad Thing.

Although obviously there's a sliding scale:

If Battlefield 1943 decided to incorporate loading screen ads in return for 'free' DLC, pretty ok with that to be honest.

If Modern Warfare 2 delayed the start of multiplayer matches to bring you a 1 minute long Cillit Band advert, then that's just plain nasty.

The imaginary sliding scale of my dreams relates not only to types of games (value, genre, expandability) but also to the ads themselves (type, length, positioning).

I don't have a massive objection to the idea of adverts in games. However to be acceptable they need to be in keeping with the game, and in fact if done correctly they can actually add to the authenticity of the game-world.

Take Mass Effect which I'm currently playing (yeah I know, been busy...), clearly throwing in a current real-world advert for Coke somewhere on a loading screen is going to out of place, break your suspension of disbelief and ruin the game experience.

But, it's entirely believable that a future would have commercial advertising possibly even with surviving recognised brands and so, done in the right way & making it an intrinsic part of the environment, not only could an advert for Coke be acceptable I think it could even add authenticity to the game world.

This wouldn't work for everything, but you get the idea.

@MilkybKid1985

"I'm fine with my points being countered, but your points did start to become more like a personal attack."

Well ok, I apologise. I just ran out of patience :)


"Sure you can complain to sony, but it would require a lot of people for it to be taken notice off."

Well it happened in this case, and I'm not sure how many people complained. If people don't buy a sequel because of bad practices, publishers care about that. ALSO, they want people to keep playing so they can see the ads. And you be surprised how few people need to complain for something to get noticed (the ITC state that for every complain they receive, and average of 600 hundred other people were offended but didn't lodge a complaint).

What I'm wondering is why aren't more adverts in Home? Wasn't Home designed as an advertising hub?

Why are they messing with games instead?

BTW, Burnout Paradise has had ads for a long time (the Obama campaign used it in the US, in fact), and it never bothered me.

personally I believe this sort of stuff should be hammered out beforehand. when users are fully aware that their game will feature in game ads etc and make their purchase regardless then they are in effect agreeing with the policy.
But to retrofit older games with this stuff is rather cheeky imo.
Yes they have every right to do stuff like this to finance ongoing support for a titles ongoing support and DLC etc. (in fact I think thats quite clever of them).
but for a single player release... I can see where some might get upset.

Advertising does not make something free. It's the case in every other walk of life and gamers really need to accept it.

In the UK, we pay a TV license (yes it goes to commercial TV companies as well as the BBC), some of us pay for Sky TV (where there are MORE adverts than anywhere else), Virgin Media etc.

We pay for cinema tickets. The cinema foyer is littered with ads. The film starts only after 20 minutes of ads, and the film is awash with product placements.

We even pay for a sodding bus ticket despite the big advert on the side of the bus advertising the latest Hugh Grant rom-com.

Face it guys, advertising will be de facto in games within 5 years, and the best way to deal with it is to leran to live with it and take it for granted, as you do everywhere else.

+1 for all of kangarootoo's comments.

There's no more adverts on Sky as there is on ITV et al.

milky - dont forget ITV's F1 coverage and I believe the Yanks couldn't possibly go through a football match without adds (either their rules or ours). So it is very common in the real world for our already paid for entertainment to be disrupted by ads.

My biggest beef is with the BBC which has more advertising (of itself) on both its TV and Radio channels than is stomachable!!! I despise the BBC, not for its adverts, but for its aloof position of pretending to be above adverts and then absolutely swamping its media with them.

@ Doctor_What

EA use billboards with live advertising in those games. They are the best way to use advertising since they only pop into your mind for a few seconds at most and usually dont ruin the immersion (Or in some games like Mercinaries 2, you can destroy them and get a bonus for them). Its when they are intergrated to the point where they are near invisble or add to the immersion like in sports games where they are tollerable.

Hell, going back to WipEout. 2097 had a great intergration with the Red Bull adverts by intergrating them with the Designers Republic's style so you would see RB ads in a very furturistic style on some of the tracks. It worked really well and never took players out of the game while still working as a Red Bull advert as the style was consistent and fit with the game.

Ads on the load screen take every player out of the immersion completley. Particuarly in games like WipEout where the style of the game is just as integral to it as the gameplay. If the pack was offered for free with adverts (EA Made packs for NFS: ProStreet and Army of Two with sponsorship. Helped they were free though). Then its understandable. Since they are asking people to pay an extra £12 on top of it. Its bullshit and Sony should be thinking up an apology for even considering this right away.

Advertisers take note:

If your advert annoys me in any way, I'm LESS likely to but your shitty product. Not more.

"What I'm wondering is why aren't more adverts in Home? Wasn't Home designed as an advertising hub? "

Because nobody's there to see them.

$ony must really be struggling to make money if this is how low they are willing to stoop.

Ultimate hand caught in the cookie jar.

I am so used to sitting around waiting for my PS3 to load and install updates and then load and install games and then load and install updates to the games, that I probably would not have realised an extra 10 seconds of loading for a level on Wipeout.

@MilkybKid1985

"burnout paradise is a good example of this working, battlefield 2142 is an example of it done wrong, with bright white lloyds tsb adverts on billboards in a dark destroyed landscape"

Now this is what I like you see, factual references that show two outcomes (one positive, one negative) that differ based on their details. There are plenty of examples out there, so none of us need to resort to imagining up new ones.

Advertising is a tool. Like all tools, the quality of the results depend more on HOW the tool is used than WHAT is actually is. I completely agree that advertising in games can be abused, believe me I do.

Sneaking ads into a game that I've already paid for is just bullshit, Sony. Not acceptable.

There's a lot of games you've payed for that have adds in them. I'm not a fan of that, but it's ok as long as its not intrusive - in Burnout for instance, it kind of suits the city to have adds - more realistic even. ;) I don't know how I feel about having an add in a load screen, especially if it has sound.

The 360's dashboard having adds after you have first bought the console AND then paid 59,99 euro a year for your Live subscription though ... yikes.

Not buying the sequels is an option. Aside from that there is probably not much you can do. Game EULAs are pretty expansive, usually saying something like "we can do what we like".

That said, the power of not buying a sequel should be undervalued. If games don't sell, nothing else matters. And if any publisher thought heavy handed advertising was going to harm sales, they would think twice. No sales means no advertising revenue (as any sponsor will want to see viewing predictions).

However, in this case I would be wary of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The previously intrusive ads have been removed, so Sony have responded. If they continue to do so, there shouldn't be major need for worry. There will always be a few "no ads under any circumstances" people, such as we have seen in this thread, but most people don't really care so long as gameplay isn't harmed.

I don't mind the ads but where is our cut, they are making money after the games release and we are getting nothing but added adverts? They should chuck out a few free maps which can be sponsored by the new ad's, sticking them onto the game where they were not before is a load of crap.

Why, exactly, do ads on a loading screen 'ruin the immersion'. Loading screens themselves ruin the immersion, with or without adverts. They are not part of the game, they're a necessary prelude to it.

Your immersion doesn't start until the game is loaded.

@stepneg

1. Your cut perhaps comes in the form of a reduced sale price.

2. Who on earth said the customer was entitled to a cut of the profits? Seriously, what business school on earth produced that idea?

There is such a related thing I suppose, its called a dividend, but it requires you to invest money up front (which is NOT the same as buying the end product - please God lets not open that fetid can of worms up again).