NBA 2K19 adds unskippable advertisements before matches

[AnotherGills 25]

The popular basketball simulation, NBA 2K19 (published by 2K Sports), has been recently updated to include unskippable advertisements. Rather than simply work as advertisements for 2K-relevant content, users have currently been treated to commercials for the television show “Snowfall”.

This is one of the latest occurrences in the trend of adding advertisements to full-priced games. In December 2018, Capcom added in-game advertisements to Street Fighter V. This addition sparked massive backlash, leading to Capcom temporarily removing the advertisements.

Unlike 2K’s advertisements, Street Fighter V’s advertisements were completely optional, allowing users to deactivate them at their discretion. The advertisements were also pertinent to Street Fighter V, whether it be showcasing premium downloadable costumes, or informing users of upcoming pro tournaments. Having the advertisements active even rewarded users with in-game currency, allowing them to purchase new downloadable characters.

In 2K’s case, these advertisements have no context regarding basketball, and do not provide players any sort of reward or incentive for watching.

Pictured here is a screenshot of one of the 2K ads, taken by Reddit user MTLCTS.

Currently, 2K Sports has not provided any comment on the matter.

 

[Aemony 142]

Ahahhaha, what the hell... I am glad I lost interest in sports games back during the early 2000s, although it wouldn’t surprise me if this shit became common in other genres as well, including single player only titles. We’re already starting to see ads for other games etc in some games, after all.

[Andytizer 269]

47 minutes ago, Aemony said:

Ahahhaha, what the hell... I am glad I lost interest in sports games back during the early 2000s, although it wouldn’t surprise me if this shit became common in other genres as well, including single player only titles. We’re already starting to see ads for other games etc in some games, after all.

This particular sports game is really huge on PC at the moment - I'm sure it's much smaller relative playerbase than on console but 20k concurrent players is really a lot of people:

I also hope advertising doesn't become a trend. However it seems we are moving more and more towards games like these becoming F2P/service games where it'll be easier to maintain large multiplayer communities by keeping the game free/low price, and to recoup money via ads/services/microtransactions.

[AlexKVideos1 22]

Alright, so who is going to make adblock for games?

[ZLoth 10]

Still a better love story than.... oh wait.... this is a sports game from EA Games..... nevermind....

Watch this ad from EA Games for a product you don't really need.... get a free loot box.... 

[Oxion3 2]

7 hours ago, ZLoth said:

Watch this ad from EA Games for a product you don't really need.... get a free loot box.... 

Don't you mean sUrPrIsE mEcHaNiC?

Anyway I can already see Jim Sterling all over this given his history of sh*tting on 2K and their awful sports games.

[Aemony 142]

9 hours ago, AlexKVideos1 said:

Alright, so who is going to make adblock for games?

My router have built-in web filter with a category for advertisement. The sad thing though is that apparently enabling that also blocks Nvidia Gamestream from working, preventing me from signing in to my Nvidia Shield and streaming games etc from their data center or my PC... 😐

I imagine they'd screw with an actual adblocker in a similar fashion...

[Garrett 214]

Blocking the ads in the hosts file or router might work as long as the ads are delivered from a different server or subdomain (otherwise this would break the game's online features). There might be other limitations depending on how this was implemented (the game might still wait a certain length of time for the nonexistent ad to finish playing).