I was doomscrolling today and came across this Youtube Short from Legendary Drops concerning in-game advertising being more fully explored by EA, Microsoft, and Sony, all practically at once:

I actually watch quite a bit of Legendary Drops, as he has some rather humorous (and compelling) takedowns of AAA studios and the nonsense they are engaging with these days. Which, apparently, includes feeling the temperature on including advertising within the games they are selling. The Short itself does not contain links to specific articles, so I had to do some digging around for the links.

• Introducing EA Advertising
• Beginning Ad-supported Game Streaming Test & Learn (Xbox)
• Sony is scaling up its Playstation advertising ambitions

As the Sony article points out, this is not everyone’s first rodeo:

This isn’t the first time Sony has tried to build an ads business around its video games division. It’s made three prior runs at monetizing PlayStation’s audience through advertising rather than hardware or subscriptions. In 2008, it launched dynamic in-game advertising on PS3. That same year, Sony opened PlayStation Home, a virtual world that doubled as branded real estate. Then in 2022, Bloomberg reported Sony had spent 18 months quietly developing a system to insert ads directly into PlayStation games, aiming to launch a private marketplace by the end of that year. None of them became a durable, scaled ads business.

It is 2026 and we are probably all well past this being a particular shock. F2P mobile games have had advertising since forever, including more pernicious gameplay-affecting ones. Indeed, one of my most-played mobile games is Tavern Rumble, a roguelite deck-builder that will give you the equivalent of +2 Strength, healing, etc, if you watch some ads after each fight. That’s… not OK. I ended up buying the “ad remover” for the game for $10 or whatever years ago, but even now, it’s hard to say whether the boosts are just extra, or whether the game was specifically balanced around them. For example, having played Candy Crush, you could not possibly convince me that some of the RNG in certain levels are beatable without power-ups, whether accrued for free over time or purchased directly.

And don’t forget the weird shit too, like Monster Energy drinks in Death Stranding:

At the moment, it is not entirely clear the exact direction the enshittification is going. When looking at the EA page, they are talking about “dynamic, real-time placements, from stadium signage to custom in-game content.” Any sort of sports game would probably look uncanny without real-ish ads plastered about, considering that is what everyone sees IRL watching from home. Same with the hoods of racing cars, etc. With XBox, it sounds a lot more like a “free with ads” subscription tier rather than seeing a Microsoft Copilot banner in the Master Chief’s visor. With Sony… who even knows, to be honest. Sony has been losing so much money lately that it would not surprise me that they end up being the worst ad offenders eventually.

Steam sometimes gets touted as a bulwark of consumer protection… and it’s true, to a point. Steam does not run ads in the client, and specifically forbids games from having mobile-esque ads:

• Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game, such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising. If your game’s business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam. Some options you could consider include switching to a single purchase “paid app,” or making your game free to play with optional upgrades sold via Microtransactions or Downloadable Content (DLC).
• Developers should not use advertising as a way to provide value to players, such as giving players a reward for watching or engaging with advertising in their game.

That same policy does allow “product placements,” which is largely reasonable. As jarring as seeing Monster Energy drinks in your videogame can be, it is difficult to draw a distinction between that and the fact that a very Norman Reedus is the one doing so. As long as you don’t have to drink a verification can, I guess it can slide. _{Christ, was that really 13 years ago?}

In any case, as odious as advertising is generally and how annoying it is seeing it infiltrate yet another facet of our lives, I feel like it may end up working itself out. If a particular game is festooned with ads, and it breaks immersion, don’t buy that game. If there are ads in the storefront, well, yeah… stores often do. Just about the worse-case scenario might be forcing ads to display prior to playing a game, which sounds like what Microsoft is testing in the context of a “free streaming” offering. Which is a tradeoff you ostensively signed up for.

Ultimately though, the days for any kind of corporate shenanigans may be numbered. The entire business model around AAA gaming is on the verge of collapse, so I kinda doubt even the C-suite are going to gamble throwing ads into their next 6-year, $300+ million game and have that be the reason it failed. Sony can take their toys off Steam and go home, but hilariously, their ability to output said toys within their own console generation has the same upper limits as everyone else. Let them release a $1000+ PS6 with five exclusive games, a locked-down storefront, and sprinkle some intrusive ads for flavor and see what happens.