In-game advertising

In-game advertising is an unsavoury monetization tactic used by greedier AAA publishers to obtain extra revenue for no extra effort. From the very beginning, this practice was despised by gamers for their attempts to get extra money from them, and for their intrusive and immersion-breaking nature.

This article will focus exclusively on this practice in the console/PC markets, as the mobile market is already infamous enough on its own.

Why This Practice Sucks

 * 1) These ads tend to be incredibly intrusive, either covering the entire screen or popping up on the HUD.
 * 2) The games that contain in-game ads often charge full price already, so there is no reason for these to be in the game, to begin with, aside from greed.
 * 3) * If a game charges an entry fee and is already heavily monetised, this simply amounts to triple dipping on the publisher's part.
 * 4) Adverts often to be placed in the middle of a loading screen, and more often than not, the ad itself is longer than the loading time. This results in gameplay not only being interrupted but also the loading screens are artificially lengthened. This becomes more of an issue now more than ever since the upcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X are touting near-instantaneous loading times, yet these ads will artificially extend loading by a good 10-15 seconds, making the promise of fast loading moot.
 * 5) Even when it is subtle (as it can get at least), corporate logos being plastered everywhere can look incredibly tacky. In addition, they can cause immersion breaking.
 * 6) Most of the time, any ads in games will have nothing to do with gaming, making them even more intrusive than they already are.
 * 7) *The greediest of publishers will make ads unskippable too, mainly by making the game always-online, forcing players to watch these abominations, especially when it comes to mobile games.
 * 8) Because of the digital era of gaming, in-game ads can be retroactively added to a game long after the game launches and after the reviews are out, just like microtransactions.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Product placement if not overused can add nice detail to certain games like the Need for Speed Games, in fact, some people might not even mind the product placement as long as it does not interrupt gameplay.
 * 2) Product placement is justified in some games like the EA Sports NASCAR/NASCAR Heat games since it makes it feel more like the actual thing.
 * 3) Ads can be an alternate way to get in game items rather than spending money on Microtransactions.
 * 4) At least console ads are not as crappy as mobile game ads.

Notable Examples

 * To nobody's surprise, EA is guilty of this, adding in-game advertising to UFC 4 two weeks after the review cycle was completed so that they weren't talked about in reviews. They did the same thing with the last game, UFC 3 (a two-year-old game) by retroactively shoving ads into the game post-launch. EA removed the intrusive advertising from UFC 4 after a major backlash, though they did try to play coy by acting as if the backlash was a shock to them.
 * Capcom infected the already polarizing Street Fighter V with "Sponsored Content", which involved littering the stages and character costumes with logos for the Capcom Pro Tour (pictured above). Although Capcom added a feature that can disable "Sponsored Content", enabling the feature rewards players with extra Fight Money, while disabling it does not, effectively incentivizing its implementation.
 * 2K Games injected full-blown advertising into NBA 2K20, taking place during loading screens, and these are not only unskippable but are also longer than the game's loading times (to the point where, after the game is finished loading, the ad purposely continues to play). Nevermind that fact the game already charges $60 and contains egregious microtransactions and loot boxes, now there's in-game ads too!
 * Unsurprisingly, they did it again with NBA 2K21. Even if you play it on PC with a fast SSD, it won't benefit you at all since the ads are, once again, longer than the actual load times and you can't skip them.
 * Several Need for Speed games are guilty of having product placement, a more subtle form of advertising, often featuring billboards advertising, special-made liveries, and even modeled buildings for various products and businesses such as:
 * Electronic gadgets, examples would be Cingular and T-Mobile, as the logos would appear in the user interface as a menu symbol for emails and voicemails.
 * Electronic stores, a building in Underground 2 resembles the Best Buy store.
 * Fast food chains, McDonald's appears as billboard material and Burger King appears as full-modeled restaurants in the city.
 * Auto parts stores, AutoZone makes an appearance on several billboards in Underground and Most Wanted (2005) and several loading screens in Carbon.
 * Insurance companies, in Carbon, there would be a white SUV with a Progressive sticker wandering around as a traffic car. It even evolved (or maybe devolved) into billboards in ProStreet and as an achievement in the latter game for crashing your car.
 * Auto parts, literally any sponsor that you can slap into your car. This form would reinforce with the fact that an abandoned K&N warehouse exists in Most Wanted (2012) and the AEM headquarters also exists in The Run's penultimate mission.
 * Body care products, Old Spice and Axe makes an appearance as livery and billboard material.
 * Cars, the Mazdaspeed3, the Ford Focus ST (C346), and even the BMW M5 (F90) appears as billboard material, and you can get them too (well, some of them).
 * Musicians (mostly rappers). Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, and even Pharrell Williams serves a cameo via livery material.
 * Political campaign, going back to 2008, Barack Obama's campaign was to put his campaign media in other media such as video games, and Carbon was one of the victims.
 * Gas companies, The Run had Shell gas stations scattered across the road with the purpose of switching cars mid-game.
 * The only saving grace is that these aren't all that intrusive and only serve as background dressing when driving around at high speeds.
 * A lot of free-to-play mobile games tend to shove ads in your face constantly while you're trying to play, especially if you're connected to the Internet, and in some cases, reward you with currency for watching an ad. Since most of them advertise other games, they tend to be incredibly misleading, often not representing the actual gameplay of the game being advertised, while some others are sexually gross or straight up moronic.
 * Later on in the Xbox 360s lifespan, Microsoft started to retool the console's dashboard to prioritize advertising. Ads were often non-gaming products like fast food, smartphones, music, sports, TV programs, etc. The Xbox One's dashboard was supported to be designed with advertising in mind, but Microsoft eventually dialed it back (thank God for that!).
 * Sony once tried to do something similar to 2K Games by injecting in-games ads into  WipEout HD which interrupted gameplay by doubling the load times. Thankfully, this didn't last long as Sony removed them after backlash.
 * The EA Sports NASCAR and NASCAR Heat games, though this is justified as mentioned above.
 * Death Stranding uses Monster Energy Drinks as an item that boosts the player and restores stamina, but in the Director's Cut version, it is replaced with a fake brand representing the Bridges corporation instead.
 * Burnout also uses a variant of Need For Speed's in game advertising, by sponsoring billboards in 3 with ads for other EA games as well as brands like Axe Body Spray. Revenge upped the ante by supplementing some product placement onto the cars, like the Etnies Racer and an actual recreation of the Carl's Jr Mobile Diner which is a crash vehicle in game, we kid you not, and a car that promotes Criterion's upcoming shooter at the time called Black (though in the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 version, you can get it for free by having the latter game's save files, which in fact the game was released at the time). Even the DLC and the kiosk cars in the 360 edition sponsors more brands, like Alienware, GameStop, Circuit City (which has since been bankrupt), Logitech, Best Buy, Spike TV, Yellowcard (due to their song Lights and Sounds being the first song in the game sequentially), and Dolby. Paradise returned to the billboard example and adding some van examples, ranging from EVGA, Diesel (the clothing brand), Vizio, and Gillette, though brands like Burger King are sponsored though, and of course, the sponsor cars. Also, the political campaign that affected Need For Speed Carbon also affected Burnout Paradise, though Paradise is one of the more notable examples, which made it garner infamy for that, until an update removed the ads.
 * Luckily, much like the Need For Speed example, the product placement here is usually for background dressing while your driving at high speed and wrecking rivals.