Odyssey – WGB, Home of AWESOME Reviews
Update: Ubisoft has blamed the ad on a vague “technical error” and has fixed the issue.
Original Story: The French developer/publisher Ubisoft appears to be experimenting with pop-up ads in one of its older Assassin’s Creed games, at least according to a video posted by Reddit user triddel24.
The short, 10-second clip shows triddel24 playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. They stop and bring up the pause menu, at which point a nearly full-screen ad for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage appears, proffering the option to buy it right now for 20% off as part of the Black Friday sales. Cancelling the ad allows the pause menu to appear.
The initial post was made on the official Xbox Reddit thread, prompting people to wonder if this was somehow Xbox-related, since Microsoft also used full-screen ads for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 a few weeks ago. However, a few users have also claimed to have got the ad while playing on PS5 as well, indicating that Ubisoft is responsible.
Other users have pointed out that Microsoft does something similar, like how it’s currently delivering a pop-up ad for Forza Motorsport as you load into Forza Horizon 5. The key difference, though, is that Microsoft’s ad doesn’t interrupt the actual gameplay. While people are still unhappy with seeing ads at all, Ubisoft’s far more aggressive strategy is understandably upsetting people.
As game development budgets continue to rise, we’re probably going to see a lot more of companies pushing the boundaries to discover exactly what people will and will not tolerate. The only way to combat these tactics is to simply not support any game that uses them.
Originally posted by wolfsgamingblog.com
