Discussion: In-game advertising is going too far even for EA

Publishers would like to incorporate advertising into their games, but that system goes a bit too far even for EA. What is going on?

video game advertising; it seems to be a hot topic within the industry. Games are costing more, gamers are becoming more choosy and developers have more and more competition. It would then be obvious to play advertisements in games, with or without in-game rewards as compensation. NBA has been doing it for years. Yet this practice goes too far even for notorious miserly Electronic Arts. And that says a lot.

Even EA doesn’t put advertising in games

An article by Axios caused a lot of controversy in the game industry. It turned out that a company called Simulmedia had developed a platform called playerWON. This allowed publishers to easily incorporate advertising into games and EA would also be interested in that.

Now EA explains to PC Gamer that the last bit is nonsense. Even EA has no intention of incorporating advertising into games. They would therefore not have concluded a deal with the company in question.

After misrepresenting ‘TV-like’ advertising in our games, we just want to make it clear that in-game advertising for console games isn’t something we’re looking at right now. We have not signed anything that agrees with its implementation.

The whole thing, however, is a bit more complicated than that. Why does Simulmedia say they have a deal with EA when they don’t? The statement of the American publisher is very specific. Words like ‘currently’ and ‘console games’ leave room for other interpretations.

On the other hand, EA has never done and/or attempted such a thing. Commercials in video games are unacceptable, whether there is in-game compensation or not. When you pay for a product, there should be no advertising. Free-to-play games play around with this moral reasoning, as the vast majority of players will never spend money on games like Warzone and Fortnite. The development has to be paid for.

Now that there are companies enabling the implementation of advertising, it is only a matter of time before such a system finds its way into the industry. Mobile games are no different, why not console games?