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This 90$ game you purchased is sponsored by: raid shadow legends.

Sony: does Sony things MS: does MS things EA: hey, don't forget me!

Nobody creates a better argument for piracy than AAA.

REMOVE EA FORM YOUR BUY LISTS!!!oh wait they haven't been on the list in years.

If you pay for a game, there should be 0 ads. Period. End of story. Anything else is completely unacceptable, and we should be pushing this narrative to all gamers.

I cancelled Prime when they brought in ads. Same as Netflix. They keep killing their services and blame the consumer for it.

imagine. you pay hundreds of dollars, maybe even thousands. a full game and its dlc. special edition, too. and you still get those "Take a break" ads you see in mobile games

Free to play titles are one thing, but I’m not paying money for a game if it’s going to advertise to me.

Canceled Netflix a long time ago, canceled prime when they started putting ADS in my paid service. EA will no longer see a dime for me. Yes, they are doing a great job and should keep it up.

EA is a company I have not purchased from in many many years. Most of these big companies have been off my watch list. I'm getting very tired of people acting surprised.

Well, this is why I haven't purchased an EA game in years

I understand that on a technical level, Wilson didn't say "we're gonna do this." But it's EA. That is one company it's hard to argue "innocent before proven guilty" when they have a rap sheet the length of the entire East Coast. They are going to. Believing they won't is massive cope.

I said it before I'll say it again, the second a game company releases a full priced game that had Ads, it's up to us to make sure that game flops as physically hard as posible. The issue is never the companies doing things like this they want to make money their whole point. The problem is when we the consumers tell them this is OK and we do that by speaking with our wallets. I remember when when even a rumor about Netflix adding ads absolutely tanked their price. Game companies are basicly waiting for it to be tried, and will use that experience to decide whether it becomes the new norm or never to be spoken about again

There are enough good quality indi developers nowadays to easily boycott greedy AAA companies.

3:12 ad ends

Only corporations find a way to reinvent cable

Even with context, the fact that they mentioned their interest in adding ads is still ghoulish and should be taken with utmost significance, if only to deter them from ACTUALLY going through with it, because if they do, it won't be long for other AAA publishers to follow suit.

$40 WEAPON SKIN?!?!?!!?!

When it comes to publishers, never think they have your interests in mind. The only ones they care about are the shareholders. If you are dealing with a publicly owned company, they will be awful. A publicly owned publisher? Prepare to have your games damaged. Any studio getting acquired by a publisher is a sign that that studio is on death's door.

EA pulled that 18years ago in Battlefield 2142 with ingame billboards with real life ads. It didn't sell. After 2 weeks it was replaced by placeholder and never come back with real ad again.

After 14 years, I've cancelled Amazon Prime the very day they asked me to pay extra to remove ads. After years of price hikes, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Everyone looking over at Ubisoft who's been awfully quiet.

Imagine Valve adding advertising to CS2 in the form of player skins. "Killed Terrorist Biden! Counter-Terrorist Obama got headshot by Terrorist Trump! - By the way, remember to vote this November." I shudder at the thought.

These CEOs are going to put pirates to work. Now they got to remove ads alongside the drm.

guessing the price increase on games from 60$ to 70$ wasn't enough for them, paired with their in-game microtransactions not being enough. They need more more more more more more. Greed is what EA has become. no longer the good brand we know and loved. now a mega corp who controls IP's and can now install ad's into their AAA/AAAA titles and if you wanna play it, AD in your face :)

They act like this hasn't been tried before and has been thoroughly rejected by us gamers. I mean it happened even before this, but I remember City of Heroes totally getting lambasted for it. Didn't GTA or one of its clones try this almost a decade ago as well too? They are hoping the younger generations just says "OK".

Don't worry EA will sell you an adblock DLC for only 19.95 per month which will block a whole 30% of the ads.

On one hand it's funny, the state of journalism where every article blows up the story further and makes more ridiculous claims. On the other hand I do think we do need that backlash, the public outcries and protests, so we as gamers show the big publishers that what their investors are asking for is not wanted and can't be pushed on us like that.

If in Madden and FIFAA they had live ad banners and signs, that actually is pretty immersive as it happens IRL and I wouldn't be all that irritated. But, this is EA and they are greedy as hell so I expect ads shoved into the worst areas and games possible so screw them.

Live service, mobile, AI and in-game ads... These are the topics the investors want to talk about. Why is ANYONE buying AAA anymore? You're paying to work an extra job and not have fun.

Remember that most venture capitalists are just gambling addicts that don’t have the self control to keep it in a casino.

I've been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 recently, so when I heard about the in-game ads I thought "Well, companies should be jumping at the opportunity to have real ads in this game where ads are literally everywhere." And then I remembered I was playing Cyberpunk. xD

Netflix hiked my price by 120% in 3 years then offered me the old price but with adverts - I said no - it can be done - it should be done.

2024 is the corporate revenge tour for how great gaming was in 2023

21:00 *_"Our Audience Wont Like It..."_* --- Since when did Android Wilson care about what any of us think? If he cared so much about gamers and people who buy the games his company publishes then every game EA releases would be an absolute masterpiece. Customers arent important. The shareholders and investors have to be pleased first

"Watch an advert, get some v-bucks" This is horrifying considering my youngest nephew already gets angry if we fast forward through commercials when watching TV

Man, gamers should really become activist investors. If everyone who bought Helldivers 2 bought a few shares in Sony they'd collectively be nearly as big a shareholder as Blackrock.

They can do whatever they want. I can also never buy any EA product ever again, in addition to shitting on EA in every conversation where they or any of their products is ever brought up in, forever.

So basically I won’t be playing EA games anymore

ironically, those of us old enough (gen x and older) remember when cable... had no ads :)

Thank you for the balanced take, and the effort of going through the transcript!

anarchy online was playing ads on billboards inside the city hubs back in the day. then again the game was F2P.

One type of game genre that in-game advertising does kinda work in, is racing games, because that can be integrated into car liveries, trackside billboards etc just like real world motorsport. Castrol for example, have had a presence in Gran Turismo since the first game back in the late 90's. WipEout 2097 had Red Bull branding around their circuits before Red Bull became a recognized brand. Need For Speed has had Burger King & T-Mobile in some of their best games. Etc etc... Point is, in-game advertising can work, but it has to be cleverly integrated and non-intrusive. Unlike say, pop-up ads that you can get on a main menu.

The capacity of bellular to keep a level head in times of spaztic mass media bloat. is honestly a refreshing pitstop in my daily routine of chaos and panic. Much appreciated.

I really do appreciate how you guys go and pull what was actually said.

Message to EA. You put ads in your games and we will collectively pirate them.

That would be funny as fuck if the algorithm in video games shows ads to stuff you've looked at, and posters / tvs in the game show those products

Good guy EA: knows you're boycotting their games and gives you a reason not to stop, thus continuing to save you money.

12:40 I can see Bellular squinting at the script where it says "Wily" and thinking "Does that really say willy?"

Next step, the advertising companies influence the games because they are not advertiser-friendly enough.

Ads in games won't be profitable since ad revenue on websites and KZfaq has been falling. Now, here comes EA announcing they're going to put ads in games. Political and Pharmaceutical ads are the worst...

I remember hearing about the idea of ads in video games before and it never really caught on beyond cross promotions like Soap shoes (officially called Grind Shoes after Sega lost the rights to mentioning the brand, though they own the shoe design) and billboards in Sonic Adventure 2 (which clearly failed because I doubt anyone realized Soap was a real shoe brand, let alone a shoe brand. I sure as heck didn't), 7-Eleven in MapleStory and McDonalds in Neopets. I remember hearing Neopets got into legal trouble in at least one nation for their currently-missing McDonalds cross-promotion (meanwhile I'm pretty sure Global MapleStory still has the 7-Eleven) even though 7-Eleven stopped doing cross promotions in the US and stopped selling Nexon Cash cards at some point in the early to mid 2010s.

The Sims have already had pop-ups for DLC in the actual game. The sims 3 would have store items appear right at the top build/buy categories for housing and create a sim. Clicking on the store would take you to the Sims 3 website. Sims 4 brought it back recently, a shopping cart on the top right. It occasionally messages you about looking at something. I'm playing on PS5 and have 95% of the dlc, but I still get the pops up with nothing actually suggested.

Product placement im ok with, within reason. Now full on ads in a game, hard no

Public owned companies will inevitably only Care about line going up. Because they have to. It's going to crumble sooner or later, as Infinite growth is Impossible.

Connected experiences = always online required

We already had EA and 2K try to do Unskippable Ads in Loading screens before.... It did not go well.

Fascinating! Thanks for the level-headed take as usual!

Insert Ready Player one scene with all of the ads.

Bet they'll just include direct linking from a loading screen's splash screen to an advertising server to replace the splash screen completely or put an ad in a window of every load screen.

Dread Wolf is gonna suck. It will be a button mash ARPG with all turn-based strategy pared-back for "accessibility". It will be a Skyrim clone with an ocean of content the depth of a mud puddle.

Am I the only one who remembers there being in-game advertisments in Mercinaries 2, back in 2008. I remember seeing an in-game billboard advertising nightmare on elm street when i was a teen

Burnout paradise had advertiser space back in the day. The in game billboards had real life adverts on them. If it were something like that i wouldn't mind it. Like say an open world game had adverts for products or the display TVs in a shop had ads playing on them 24/7

Fucking EA classic

Understand this is not the first time this was proposed. In 2005 game companies floated the idea of in game advertising like billboards in racing games and what not as a way to help pay for the growing need to maintain online servers.

I think one of the problems we're seeing with increased monetization is that these companies operate under the notion that 'infinite growth' exists. The bigger they get, the bigger they wanna be. You can only charge your customers so much and you can only have so many customers.

On the Ads also - Electronic Arts has a significantly non-zero number of mobile games on the Android market (I assume on iOS as well, but didn't look) and as you mention, nearly all of them are advertising supported. Regardless of the AAA titles, they publish a lot of not-AAA, as well as free-to-play titles. I'd assume we're less likely to see an advert inside, say Dragon Age: We Fired All the Writers and Let ChatGPT Write It - than in, say, a free-to-play version of Burnout using NFT's for AI-generated paint jobs for the Investor Bros.

I've never been comfortable with ads in-game but it was wild seeing Sam Porter Bridges down not one, not two, but three whole Monsters. (I guess more like two and a half)

I remember back in the day when City of Heroes/Villains started replacing some of the in-game billboards with real world adverts. I legit died because I stopped in my tracks and was like "Was this always a billboard for JG Wentworth?" and didn't notice the baddies shooting me. Pretty sure this was after they started flirting with their freemium model, so while I was sort of mad *I* was seeing adverts in a 10$/mo game, at least some people who weren't paying were seeing the adverts? I guess? At least they weren't super intrusive the way loading screen adverts are? I guess? ... god damn it, now I have the stupid JG Wentworth jingle stuck in my head again.

i never even noticed ads with prime cause i only ever had it for the shipping perks

The only reason EA games exist is to pirate them, assuming they are worth playing which is rare these days

I like to imagine mainstream industry as a whole has to be this giant wheel they spin every week to see what incredible idea they can realize.

I'm simply not watching Amazon Prime anymore. Cannot be bothered with ads.

More funny is that they still cling to old Frosted engine.....move one tree and the project faces exodus with crashes and bugs

This is not the first time that this has happened. Technically. In the past some games have included advertisements, but they tended to be games first and the ad was normally stuffed into the Extra tab. Then there are tie-in games where the game itself is an ad. The third type I have seen is what I call Dedicated Content. A part of the basic release that is basically an ad. This doesn't feel like any of those. This feels like a way to sacrifice play experience for 3rd party investment. This feels like it will shift the focus away from providing a game people will buy to a platform for people to put ads on. This going to get games under scrutiny of another set of government organizations. Communication commissions.

Seeing this made me think that we see games industry by the lens of Pc/console gaming, but investor groups see mobile as part of the industry too. So much of the pressure to improve monetization is based on that branch of the market gamers tend to ignore. I would like to know more about it.

Burnout 3 Takedown actually had ads in game, as in there where AXE advertising posters in the game, so it actually fit in, but still...

Honestly in games like nhl, eafc, driving games, etc you can sell advertising space on billboards, and product placement etc where it's just part of the game and is still ethical. Every arena is plastered in ads anyway.

20:02 Gladly I didn't have to experience that so far when I use Amazon for the occasional film on a pay-per-view basis.

Imagine playing battlefield. Now imagine playing it, and needing to watch a 15 second ad every time you respawn and have to close a pop up ad everytime you reload. Imagine :D

I am exactly as old as Andrew Wilson. One of the many names on my "buttholes i'd like to outlive" list. Keeps me motivated to live a healthy life.

Ngl I got hooked on this channel because of the ME:A uncharted worlds playing on the background. Goddammit I love that thing.

A wise man once said, "How many times I gotta teach you this lesson, old man?"

I've seen like 100+ Bellular videos and I had no idea I wasn't subscribed.

Triple A games are not AAA anymore. They're A at best. If I have to pay a premium for a game, then not own it and on top of it, have to see ads... what's AAA about it actually? Apparently indie is the new AAA.

Didnt EA say the same thing about 2042? They said its the biggest team ever on a Battlefield game. Going back to it roots, etc..

I actually wouldnt mind too much if they do ingame ads that are immersive, like walking around a town seeing a billboard for a real product. or even some NPC in a market place giving some sales pitch for a real product. my issue would be with any immersion breaking advertising, because that would make the game experience worse, and the market is too competitive to expect us to put up with that.

EA: Evacuate Audience

EA already has advertising in all of their sports games.

I wouldn't mind it when gta used taco bell instead of clucky bell or something like that. Most their fast food restaurants were used to mimic a real fast food restaurant anyways so them using the real name wouldn't really change that much for me. Basically, if the ads are just in the background and don't really negatively impact the game in any way I don't mind this at all.

Imagine, you've just had a stellar night out, she's giving you inviting eyes, she leads you into the door, invites you inside... then sits you down for a 5 minute political advert and tells you she's a deal on in-relationship currency if you watch the full advert and answer a small quiz afterwards; and you have to act now, it's a one time deal, and you'll get a free roll on her lootbox. and you pull out a handshake and it's 5$ more to see if you can get that 0.05% roll on a great night undercover.

free to play is one thing, although knowing game companies they would make the ads so intrusive it would ruin it. games we pay for though should never have ads at all. Paid cosmetics are bad enough.

Much of this "reporting" is a question of careful wording. Tell the truth, but never the whole truth. Politicians have 'plausible deniability'. A phrase that I had to stick to a long while ago was "not knowingly..." so long as I could legitimately say that I did not knowingly allow x or y, then it was just on the correct side of the rules.

The AAA industry really needs to just collapse

EA has had billboard ads in its racing games for 24 years

Nobody remembers the Gatorade stamina bars from 15 years ago? Screw EA.

There is no faster way to ruin an artistic enterprise than to take on shareholders.

The questions in the earnings call makes sense but it is sad that only one question is directly relevant to one of EA's games.

I'm a patient gamer... I can wait for the crack... I absolutely won't pay for any game that has ads in it, unless it is an in-universe ad, subtly pointing me towards other connected games in the same universe. 19:00 The fuck are you on about? It is not 'accepted' on mobile, it is tolerated, at best... don't try to normalize this shit.