Last week, Electronic Arts quietly added in-game ads into EA Sports UFC 4. While advertising inside video games -- especially sports games (and even EA Sports UFC 3) --isn't anything unheard of, these ads were especially intrusive, showing up in the middle of actual gameplay.
A fan took the Reddit to share the actual footage of an ad for Amazon's The Boys appearing during his gameplay. The ad not serves during a transition to replay, but also appears at the bottom of the screen while the fight is actually going on. Although it may be accurate of sports advertising in real life, it's pretty scummy to do so in a game that someone has already paid upwards of $60 for.
As some even pointed out, in-game ads would be tolerable if UFC 4 was a free-to-play game or if they were implemented in a more natural way, like on the octagon canvas. But EA Sports UFC 4 is a AAA sports game with a premium price tag.
Look at the amount of times that an ad appears in the middle of gameplay, this is unacceptable for a $60 game and disgusting to add in an update after I already purchased the game. from r/EASportsUFC
Following major backlash, EA swiftly disabled the advertising and offered a statement to Eurogamer, which was also shared with the UFC community.
"Earlier this week, the team turned on ad placements in EA SPORTS UFC 4 that appeared during the “Replay” moments in gameplay. This type of advertising inventory is not new to the UFC franchise, though we have typically reserved displaying ads to specific main menu tiles or Octagon logo placement.
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"It is abundantly clear from your feedback that integrating ads into the Replay and overlay experience is not welcome. The advertisements have been disabled by the team and we apologize for any disruption to gameplay that players may have experienced.
"We realize that this should have been communicated with players ahead of time and that's on us. We want to make sure our players have the best possible experience playing EA SPORTS UFC 4, so ad integration in the Replay and overlay experience will not be reappearing in the future. Thank you for your continued feedback on EA SPORTS UFC 4."
Kudos to EA for listening to the fans, but one has to wonder what the publisher was thinking by even implementing such a feature. It was an especially shady move given that EA Sports UFC 4 released in mid-August without the in-game advertisements, which surely would've been noted in many reviews.
EA Sports UFC 4 is currently available for Xbox One and PlayStation.
