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Ubisoft blames ‘technical error’ for showing pop-up ads in Assassin’s Creed (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 year ago by HowSwayy@lemmy.ml to c/gaming@lemmy.ml

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[–] thantik@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yeah, the technical error of enabling them before they meant to. Anyone who's stupid enough to have bought a Ubisoft game in the past decade deserves this shit. There's so much excuse-making about the way gaming companies are going, that they can all get fucked. I hope they enjoy their full screen ads.

They didn't accidentally code everything for this, test it, put it in updates, etc. That was all on purpose, and they 'accidentally' enabled it to measure how much outrage was generated. If people make excuses for this shit now, it WILL be coming as a permanent "feature".

[–] mifan@feddit.dk 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Absolutely agree. I was about to play the devils advocate and try to find ways, that this could happen by accident. If it was on PC it could’ve been the Ubisoft launcher (or whatever it’s called) which accidentally took window focus.

But this is on Xbox and PlayStation. That can only mean that it’s in the game files. That does neither happen by accident nor by technical error.

The only error could be, that it was enabled before they meant to. But no, this was 100% fishing for reactions.

[–] h3rm17@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I'll tru to play Devil's Advocate as well. You know how, durong development, specially on AAA games, they try things, discard them, and then leave them in the code, caise removing it is harder? Like Bethesda's cut content, secret, semy empty levels in other games, etc. Maybe they tried a new ad pop up system during development, ultimately decides to remove it with a feature flag or something for it not to actually pop up, and then it turns out they did not disable the pop up.

Buuuuut they are Ubisoft, so while this is definitely possible...

[–] Potatisen@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Absolutely correct.

It's the old "let's do it and measure outrage". Companies have figured out how to slide things into the mainstream now.

Give it a bit, see how F2P games are gonna start doing things like "enable ads for 50% more coins" and then... Few years later, its standard.

Just sucks and it's so tiring to always have to be researching and be aware of everything, all the time. I just want to play my damn game, man...

[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ubisoft can go fuck themselves with their little "accident". I haven't bought one of their games in years amd this greedy corpo shit paired with lackluster games is exactly why.

[–] umulu@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well said!

Last game I bought was crew 1 for 5€ many years ago. All the games I have were redeemed using amazon gaming.

[–] irmoz@reddthat.com 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How the fuck do you accidentally add popups

[–] MTLion3@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You don’t - it’s a bullshit excuse. It’s like a 5 year old with their hand in the cookie jar saying “I didn’t mean to do it.” Yes you did, little Jimmy, what you didn’t mean to do was get caught. Now blow that idea up to a greedy, unethical, billion dollar corporation.

[–] irmoz@reddthat.com 9 points 1 year ago

Rhetorical question haha, I know it's bullshit. Popups take effort to create, you can't just accidentally add them.

[–] dan1101@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago

A technical error doesn't result in popup ads. The code had to already be there.

[–] Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"You were not supposed to see that yet. Upsi dupsi"

[–] Master@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

That's was just a little Oopsi-soft

[–] viking@infosec.pub 17 points 1 year ago

"Sorry we showed you the ad before the black Friday return window lapsed."

[–] Are_Euclidding_Me@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

Ubisoft says it was trying to put an ad for Assassin’s Creed Mirage in the main menu of other Assassin’s Creed games. However, a “technical error” caused the promotion to show up on in-game menus instead. Ubisoft says the issue has since been fixed

So they fully planned to roll out full screen pop up ads, it was just supposed to be in the main menu, not in-game. Fuckers.

This is why I don't play AAA games.

[–] Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Fuck Ubisoft and fuck greedy corporations!

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Ubisoft is blaming an unspecified “technical error” for a fullscreen pop-up ad that appeared in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey this week.

Reddit users say they spotted the pop-up on Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game, with an ad appearing just when you navigate to the map screen.

“This is disgusting to experience while playing,” remarked one Reddit user, summarizing the general feeling against such pop-ups in the middle of gameplay.

“We have been made aware that some players encountered pop-up ads while playing certain Assassin’s Creed titles yesterday,” says Ubisoft spokesperson Fabien Darrigues, in a statement to The Verge.

Either way, the intent of adding pop-ups into the middle of a game you’ve paid for is rather “gross” as one Reddit commenter puts it.

Imagine a world full of games you’ve paid $70 for and then ads popping up in the middle of gameplay.

The original article contains 344 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] icermiga 2 points 1 year ago

Obviously coding this up isn't accidental, so I guess they mean that activating the feature was accidental (not very reassuring) but also it's kind of hard to believe that even that was accidental. Any very basic QA would have prevented that. It was probably deliberately testing the waters.