Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Ubisoft Ruins Gaming Again”.
Ubisoft embeds popups, uh popup ads in old games. Oh wow, now I’ve known about this because I play all these old Ubisoft games from time to time. But it’s usually just on, like you know, you load the game, there’s like the play options: settings whatever it’s usually just in the corner on that screen very similar. If you remember when we were talking about the Starfield UI back in the day – and I was like that logo in the corner – that’s going to end up being an ad spot. The reason why I called that out is because Ubisoft is been doing that for years. So is a bunch of other games to be completely honest. Ubisoft is not alone in doing that at all, but what’s different this time around is that it wasn’t just on that. First screen: oh no uh, there was multiple reports that Ubisoft was placing ads for their Black Friday sale in gameplay. When people would like open the map and stuff, it would pop up.
Then really brutal, uh Ubisoft claimed that the ads were meant to appear on the main screen and that they appeared during gameplay due to a technical error. Okay, I mean yeah, look I mean, we’ve had we’ve had our own instances of gross incompetence leading to things that could have been perceived as negligent or okay. They were negligent leading to things that could have been perceived as malicious, yeah, um yeah, so not going to say that’s impossible, I’m also not going to say it’s impossible that this was a little Tri, a thing yeah. My my my hot take on this is that I think it might actually be because I think those old games don’t exactly get a lot of love right, getting actual development forsus the odds of them getting neglected yeah.
So somebody on high is just like hey. We need this app and somebody’s like put it in everything, yeah, just someone HED it into the wrong, probably didn’t test it enough. Didn’T do something or other.
I don’t know um yeah that that’s I yeah the the discussion question is like what kind of technical error would specifically open a popup ad when a player opens their map H and it’s like yeah. I don’t know, there’s a lot of weird yeah you’d, be amazed. Um, I I don’t blame people for reacting that way. I don’t blame people for thinking that, but things get a little weird like. I saw a really interesting uh interview with one of the one of the developers of Left for Dead, who is working on his own game right now, apparently he’s no longer with valve, but um. He talked about how the game play.
Experience might have been good in Left for Dead one but see I never understood why Left for Dead 2 was just left for dead one, but with more maps. And apparently the reason is that under the hood left for dead, one was a piece of um. He talked about how they would have to load the map two to three times to get it to work like that was the workaround and so uh. The one of the big driving forces for Left 4 Dead 2 was that Left 4 Dead. One was UNM modable. The second that anyone tried to mod it it would just it would just be crash city um, and so these are the kinds of things that I think, as just you know, a gamer who didn’t work on the game. You might look at and go.
Oh yeah Left 4 Dead, too cash grab, or you know what whatever else it is um, but in reality it was just yeah kind of there. There were factors. There were factors that you, you didn’t fully understand, yeah and there’s some people saying like any form of AD in a video game that I paid for is wrong and it’s like you know what that’s fair enough, but that’s not this current topic because they’ve been doing That, for a long time, yeah that ship sailed a long time ago. By that logic, any form of ad in a movie you paid for is unacceptable and there do be a lot of those.
By that logic, any form of AD in a podcast that you paid for would be unacceptable. The good news is, you didn’t pay for this podcast and it’s brought to you by the ridge. .