The issue of ads in video games is starting to stink. Yes, we’ve all gotten used to mobile games—especially free-to-play ones—having ads here and there, but the possibilities, sadly, are endless. The proof is in the latest trick that Ubisoft has slipped into ‘Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’ players, which is simply too much, as if they didn’t want to acknowledge it.
The advertising odyssey
If you’re a fan of ‘Assassin’s Creed’, you might not be able to play much else because Ubisoft churns out new games for the franchise at a breakneck speed. In fact, since ‘Odyssey’, they’ve already released ‘Valhalla’ and ‘Mirage’, with new installments soon to follow. If you want to play through the entire saga, get ready for quite a few hours, as it already totals 30 titles, including 13 console games and 17 mobile or virtual reality spin-offs, all in just 15 years. Whew.
However, no matter how much variety the franchise offers, when you’re immersed in a video game, you expect it to isolate you from the rest and not remind you that, deep down, it’s a product and you’re just a consumer. Nevertheless, Ubisoft has decided that upon opening the map in ‘Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’, before accessing it, a fabulous Black Friday offer promoting… ‘Assassin’s Creed Mirage‘ appears.
Users have responded in a way far from enthusiasm: with threats to uninstall the game and even return it, swearing off any future titles from the series (something we know will likely change when ‘Assassin’s Creed Codename Red,’ or whatever it’s finally called, hits the market). And it’s true that a company should only let marketing possibilities go so far: Ubisoft has clearly crossed the line, and fans are far from happy with the decision.
We’ve grown accustomed to practices like these, but it’s always surprising that games, always pushing cosmetic microtransactions, DLCs, and other easy money-grabs, continue to want to accumulate more and more, even if it means ruining the player’s experience. Hopefully, in the future, we’ll see less of these practices… if the data doesn’t turn out as positive as they expect. Fingers crossed.
