Fuck EA of course but that AI pic is horrible. The fuck does a U-shaped Ferrari sitting in front of an Obama campaign billboard have to do with EA putting ads in games?
Fellow gamers, now is the time to push back on this crap. If you don't do it now, you'll live with this forever. They tried doing this in past generations as well, and failed.
Spread the word, tell others. Be vocal! Advocate for this not happening.
And if someone tells you that this isn't preventable, tell them not to be cynical. Remind them of the other positive changes we were able to have happen recently in gaming, and that in the past when they tried this, the pushback was successful in keeping the gaming companies from doing so.
And remember, some of those you would try to convince are probably astroturfers/bots.
Remeber if they call you naive or quixotic or an idealist that means they can't win the argument with normal means and rely on name calling. Act with integrity, it's worth it!
EA is on my boycott list since Origin & ME3. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯
How many of those have in-game ads though?
There's a history of pushing back against adding ads into games, that's different than boycotting the company overall. One can be successful, when another is not.
And having said that, one could even argue that their desperation to make money by putting ads into games (again) is not just about keeping the shareholders happy, but also because of people having boycotted them over the years, depriving them of additional income. You may be making more of a stand than you realize.
I'm saying there's not really anything more I can do when it comes to EA. The company is already completely down the shitter for me and they're the ones who would have to gain my trust back. That's the only possible development.
The problem is that many people don't have a similar spine for actual principles like this, and the majority of people simply don't even care. That's why this rotten company is not just still a thing, but continues to do what they've done for the last couple decades.
I’m saying there’s not really anything more I can do when it comes to EA.
You are already doing your part. Thank you, citizen.
But, you can also vocalize to others, especially the younger generation, that things like ads in games can be pushed back against successfully, as it has in the past. That they don't have to put up with crap, or think they can't push back against the monolithic corporation, because its been done before, successfully.
Hell, EA was one of those companies that tried ads in games before, and had to retreat from the pushback from customers.
The problem is that many people don’t have a similar spine for actual principles like this, and the majority of people simply don’t even care.
I always thought that they cared, especially if they are being taken advantaged of, but that it doesn't rise to a high enough threshold to actually do something about it (they triage it lower on their problem list), and that they feel that they are alone in doing it, so why bother.
What past events have shown though is that if we all do it together,even in a non-coordinated sort of way (organically),then the burden is not that hard individually, and the effort/pushback works well/enough.
i just want to fucking play battlefield 1 when i want that i own. i don't care about your EA live services, i don't care about your ads. i already gave you my money because i liked the game. but i fucking hate you so much EA, like you're on top of the list
I hope gamers will unite.
Though it seems far more likely that kids will just buy it because "wooooo hype. Who cares about ads, I already watch a bazillion a day when doomscrolling Instagram".
Once you discover the sea of great indie games you won't even care what AAA is doing anymore.
Some of the AAA games remove cash shops after the game loses relevance anyway, like Shadow of War, meaning you get rewarded for not buying the game until it is 90% off.
I hope gamers will unite. Though it seems far more likely that kids will just buy it because “wooooo hype. Who cares about ads, I already watch a bazillion a day when doomscrolling Instagram”.
Something tells me they will, at least it's on the latest generation to step up.
Previous generations of always pushed back against this, and won.
Pretty sure the Hell Divers 2 backlash was the only time I've ever seen gamers win over a corporation. Blizzard fans have made me absolutely cynical about gamer boycotts.
Nothing changed with Helldivers. The game is still blocked in over 100 countries and people who rightfully purchased the game still can not play it. Sure we don't have to create an account, but that was annoying -not an actual issue. The real issue was thousands of people suddenly losing access to their game because Sony wants conversion.
Sony made a social media post. They didn't fix shit. But now the backlash is gone and the countries are still blocked, they can silently reinstate the bullshit in 3 months time.
Regardless, I was expecting absolutely no change from Sony and quite frankly, still expect to do to a rug pull once people's attention are elsewhere. Oh look, Microsoft is doing a thing now.
still expect to do to a rug pull once people’s attention are elsewhere. Oh look, Microsoft is doing a thing now.
Corporations being corporations and trying to rip off the customer to make the stockholder happy is a constant thing (unfortunately). "Viva Capitalism!", and all that.
But 'We the People Customers' ultimately have the control, we control the purse strings. They need the money in our wallets, and we can decide to give them that money or not, based on how they treat us, as customers. They will try to psyop convince you otherwise of that fact, but that fact remains, and holds true.
Its an endless battle/war, but its a good one to fight for. Then they try something the next time, we push back against it. Again.
Nothing changed with Helldivers. The game is still blocked in over 100 countries and people who rightfully purchased the game still can not play it. Sure we don’t have to create an account, but that was annoying -not an actual issue. The real issue was thousands of people suddenly losing access to their game because Sony wants conversion.
Last I heard that problem went away with them backing off of not needing a Playstation account anymore.
And the fact that they backed off the account requirement is a definate win for us.
Sony made a social media post.
Original date for PsN requirement was June.
During the backlash, over 100 countries were delisted. They still are.
The current situation is still much worse than launch.
Sony made a social media post. Original date for PsN requirement was June. During the backlash, over 100 countries were delisted. They still are. The current situation is stillmuch worsethan launch.
The primary goal was to not have to create a Playstation account, and people can get a refund now from Steam if they want, where before they could not.
Sony can always decide where to sell their products, regardless if there's a controversy, or just any day of the week and for any reason. We could never control where Sony sells their products.
I’d love to know how to get a refund. I’ve tried 4 times with different prompts suggested in forums and comments. It is in fact worse and not equal to the state it was in at launch.
Try asking again for one.
That video I linked was stating they were now doing refunds. I haven't tried it, since I don't own the game (didn't like the root level access crap). But I've also read elsewhere that at first they were not doing refunds but they changed their minds and now they are.
Pretty sure the Hell Divers 2 backlash was the only time I’ve ever seen gamers win over a corporation.
There's been others, over the decades. This isn't the first time they tried putting ads into games. All the other times were pushed back successfully.
Blizzard fans have made me absolutely cynical about gamer boycotts.
True-ish, but people really did step up more in more recent days, and voted with their wallets. The pop dropped was bad enough and for long enough that the company got sold off to Microsoft to recover, and Bobby is gone.
All the other times were pushed back successfully.
Was it or was it just poorly implemented and the metrics were looking good for the companies buying the ads? Not sure Microsoft firing Bobby because he was a bad leader or just cause it's an easy way to trim fat and make the purchase look better for their investors.
Yes, and consider what insane amount of pressure was necessary to achive this. Over 200.000 negative reviews for HD2. That makes it very unlikely to happen again. It shows how little gamers can achieve and how little their concerns are heard if they are not accumulating to a critical mass.
I know that I've played EA games before, but I don't think that I've played stuff from them recently, so I don't have a personal preference on their games.
As long as they also provide some option to pay more and not have ads, I don't really see an issue. It just becomes another option to buy the game -- if you want ad-supported, can do that, and if you want to pay directly, you can do that.
If they don't have any option to pay for an ad-free experience, then it seems like it could be obnoxious for people depending upon their ad preference.
I think that all the games that I would play -- setting aside the issue of EA specifically -- I'd rather pay for an ad-free experience, but eh. Games with ads -- as well as the option to buy an ad-supported or ad-free version at different prices -- are a major thing on, say, mobile, so obviously there are people who would prefer the ad-supported route.
Back in 2022, EA patented a system that generates in-game content and ads based on a person's playstyle.
Personally, I don't really think that I want to have my activity logged and data-mined either way, though. I would pretty much always rather pay more than have my activity recorded. I care more about that than the ads. I'm fine paying more for that, but I want the opt-out. I'd also really prefer that vendors like Steam make it very clear that if a game is being subsidized by extracting data on a user, what data is being extracted. Right now, it's kind of a free-for-all, and the games aren't running in a jail, so they can do pretty much whatever. I think that just making assumptions about what they do isn't a great idea.
I remember when I saw a comment from some guy in an airport whose phone first set off an alarm and then told him that his gate had been changed and started giving him arrows to the new gate. He hadn't told Google that he was flying anywhere. This was also back when Location Services was pretty new, so people were less-familiar with it. What had happened was that (1) Google had his location, (2) while he was indoors, while GPS didn't work well Google had identified the location of other fixed devices with Bluetooth and WiFi radios emitting unique identifiers based on other people's phones reporting them and building a global database, (3) Google could infer his position from getting their signal strengths, (4) Google had been scanning his email, seen the email that the airline had sent him about a gate change, scraped the email, and determined that he'd had a gate change.
That could be a useful feature, but the point is that he had no idea that any of that was happening or that Google was making use of the data at the time. And that was many years back -- I guarantee that data-mining has gotten no less-intensive.
I remember talking to one friend who was a software engineer in the video game industry who was involved with some game where -- after recording your gameplay for a while -- they could, with pretty good accuracy, based on correlation with past users, infer with reasonable accuracy data that included one's IQ and a set of "employability" statistics. That's probably got value to an employer, but I suspect that most people aren't thinking that they're in a job interview determining their future employment status when they're playing a video game in their living room. Like, if you're working out what a video game costs, you probably aren't thinking about the potential for it to creates information asymmetries in future job situations, where a potential employer has more data about you than you do about them.
Counter-counter-point, “Devil’s 🥑,” games have cost $60 ($70 with the most recent generation) since, what, 2006? 2007?
$60 in 2006 is over $90 today.
So we’re paying less upfront for games now than we were in 2006. Yet costs to develop AAA games have gone up significantly.
I’m not saying ads in games is a good idea, I fucking hate ads. I also hate microtransactions. But every time prices go up people get angry. Remember the backlash when Xbox Series X and PS5 prices were standardized at $70?
I don’t know the solution. But the current trends are unsustainable. Just like everything else in late-stage capitalism.
They also have far better scaling on sales than they did in 2006, with tons of storefronts and easy access for anyone to download and play a game without needing to go to a physical store.
People like to complain about steam taking 30% of a sale, but it isn't like game companies were getting 70% of a boxed game on a shelf. They had manufacturing, shipping, and a ton of other costs for physical media that they don't spend on digital sales that can scale infinitely in an extremely short period of time because it can't sell out locally.
If they are spending too much for their return, then they need to scale back their spending.
This is an argument publishers love to make, but it's bullshit. Yes, games (assuming you ignore in game purchases/DLC, which you obviously shouldn't but I digress) have got cheaper in real terms due to inflation lowering how much $60 is really worth, while games have stayed at that price tag.
It's also true that development costs have went up.
Now, here's the part that game publishers conveniently never talk about: distributing games is far cheaper now. We're usually not shipping pallets of discs that take up loads of space and cost money to physically create and transport, while also having to build in a profit margin for all the middlemen along the way, including for the retailer. We predominantly buy games digitally.
On top of that, gaming used to be niche, now everybody does it. The market is far larger, so they don't need to charge a lot to still make bank.
Now, here’s the part that game publishers conveniently never talk about: distributing games is far cheaper now. We’re usually not shipping pallets of discs that take up loads of space and cost money to physically create, while also having to build in a profit margin for all the middlemen along the way, including for the retailer. We predominantly buy games digitally.
On top of that, gaming used to be niche, now everybody does it. The market is far larger, so they don’t need to charge a lot to still make bank.
Great points! And yes, they're almost never talked about!
Even though costs of AAA games have gone up for some games (certainly not all) because of the size of teams/labor hours, so have the volume of sales. Publishers have made more and more profit while the average price of AAA games had stayed about the same for a long time.
Games selling in the hundreds of thousands was considered really good decades ago but now those are in the tens of millions.
Publishers aren't having problems with profitability, so much so that they've been buying up large swaths of development houses and IPs and then dismantling them when they have a single flop.
EA's gross profit in 2010 was $1.6B, in 2014 was $3.03B and in the past 12 months have been $5.8B right now according to macrotrends.
But the current trends are unsustainable
The current trend in profitability is increasing, not decreasing. It isn't a minor trend or minor increases either.
Major publisher profitability has vastly increased in spite of stagnant game prices. They don't have to increase prices to increase growth. It is simply that the market allows the increase of the price with more profitability and so they do.
A business model wherein the thing someone makes and sells brings in a profit just by customers buying the thing, without the long tail of continuing to sell the customers' eyeballs to whoever forever after, is not an unreasonable concept. Countless indie games and smaller publishers have managed this for generations and still do.
If EA and the other massive blockbuster publishers can't figure out how to make their business model work in a non-exploitative manner, too damn bad about it. We don't actually need them.
If I paid >$0 for a game I don't want ads in that game.
Season passes, in game stores, and every other mtx in a game I paid for is insulting and generally ends up being intrusive and annoying since they tend to shove it in your face.
I was going to read all of this until I got to "provide some option to pay more and not have ads" . Zero chance this would ever end in a consumer friendly way after that first payment.
This is some of the most corpo boot licking drivel I've read in a long time. It sounds like someone who has been locked in a tiny cell and forced to watch shareholder presentations on repeat. Only to be released when they can explain why all people want to be marketed to.
Pay extra for a non-ad experience? Ad preference?
Get the fuck out, and stop making shit ass mobile games.
Let your player base dwindle some more. I already outright refuse to play EA crap. Fill it with ads, make ads mandatory before and after all loading screen.
Want to equip new gear? Forced ads
Want to save? Forced ads
Put so many ads that you make bajillions. Do it ea
I dare you.
Here's another great idea: persistent ads. Have ads take up a portion of the screen always. Players may want to shop while fighting a boss or taking a shot on goal.
I know this isn't a common takeaway, but I'm all for it.
The current state of call centers is EXCRUCIATINGLY painful for consumers and only exists in the form it does to commodify US for the company. We tolerate the shit experience of call centers, so companies don't need to pay more money to give us a better experience. That's why they exist, the only reason. If firing them all and turning them into AI makes the experience even SLIGHTLY less painful than calling your local public assistance help line, I'm all for it. If I can bypass 4 separate phone tree selection menus with 3 minutes of wait time with the crackling loud wait music between being passed around departments, I'm all for it. These are shit dead end jobs with no upside whatsoever.
The fact that generative AI is being used as a means of large corporations consolidating even more wealth rather than attempting to free the working class from shitty, menial jobs shows that we're way the fuck off with how we conceptualize of "work".
This should be a good thing, but for lots of people this will suck.
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