EA Sports has apologised to UFC 4 gamers, following complaints over invasive advertisements during in-fight replay footage.
Gamers were incensed by the appearance of the advertisements last week, as EA looked to make some post-purchase revenue from the new version of its mixed martial arts simulator.
The advertisements were pretty true to the real television viewing experience, showing a brief sponsor’s banner before showing the slow motion replay. However, gamers took to Reddit and other social media sites accusing EA of taking advantage of loyal fans who’d already forked over full price for the game.
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Now the studio has heeded the backlash, disabled the ads and vowed they will not return to the gameplay experience. The company did point out that advertisements within the game was not new, but had previously been reserved for the main menu and logos on the Octagon canvas. It appears the company underestimated just how much unhappiness the expansion of the ad strategy would generate.
CoreySA of EA posted on the EASportsUFC subreddit: “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.”
Some gamers were particularly unhappy with the manner in which EA added the commercial interruption weeks after the game launched. Some accused the firm of doing so to bypass the eyes of reviewers. Others pointed out the numerous ongoing issues with the game have not been addressed, while the development team spent time integrating the ads.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
