Just a week after EA Sports UFC 4 released, EA Games decided to patch in-game ads into the fighter. Players noticed advertisements briefly popping up at the beginning and the end of replays. A user posted the video on Reddit and it went viral with over 91k upvotes. The clip briefly showed an image of Amazon’s The Boys with a 4 September date and a call to action informing gamers the can watch it on Prime Video. This was to advertise the second season of the new show. However, not everyone saw the ad.
The adverts went live two weeks after the launch of EA Sports UFC 4 and this was intentional. This way, critics such as ourselves who reviewed the game would not have seen them. Reddit users expressed their anger for the adverts saying that the game is not free-to-play and they should not put up with ads in UFC 4.
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EA is now removing the ads from UFC 4 after fans took to social media to complain about them. Gamers flooded to EA’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube feed to make themselves heard over the placements of the advert and EA seems to be backing down. In a statement, the company claims they are aware that the ads are not welcome by fans. In addition, they also apologise for any disruption to gameplay players may have experienced.
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“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.
“It is abundantly clear from your feedback that integrating ads into the Replay and overlay experience is not welcome. The advertisements are now disabled by the team and we apologize for any disruption to gameplay that players may have experienced.
“We should have communicated this 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.”[/perfectpullquote]
Watch the clip down below and decide for yourself. In addition, you can read our review for the game here.
EA decided to add full-on commercials in the middle of gameplay in a $60 game a month after it’s release so it wasn’t talked about in reviews from r/assholedesign