Skip to main content

Electronic Arts taps out to player backlash against UFC 4 in-game ads

Electronic Arts was forced to dial back the introduction of in-game ads to EA Sports UFC 4, following massive backlash from players.

Recommended Videos

UFC 4 players voiced their disappointment and outrage against the appearance of real-world ads to UFC 4 in a Reddit thread, which showed a clip featuring an ad for Amazon’s The Boys Season 2 while within a match. The show’s logo also appears in the middle of the octagon, and briefly on top of the timer at the bottom of the screen.

Players were outraged that the in-game ads appeared more than two weeks after UFC 4‘s launch on August 14, which meant that reviews for the game would not mention the ads.

Further escalating the backlash was the fact that UFC 4 is a full-priced game. While ads have become a norm in the video game industry to earn revenue for free-to-play games, players questioned the presence of ads in UFC 4 when they already paid $60 for it.

Electronic Arts responds to UFC 4 backlash

It did not take long for Electronic Arts to respond to the backlash, with a representative of the company posting on Reddit that the ads have been disabled.

“It is abundantly clear from your feedback that integrating ads into the Replay and overlay experience is not welcome. The advertisements have been disabled by the team and we apologize for any disruption to gameplay that players may have experienced,” the representative said in a Reddit post.

“We realize that this should have been communicated with players ahead of time and that’s on us. We want to make sure our players have the best possible experience playing EA SPORTS UFC 4, so ad integration in the Replay and overlay experience will not be reappearing in the future,” the representative added.

It was unclear, however, if the removal of the in-game ads means that they will not return in some other form in UFC 4 in the near future. Digital Trends has reached out to Electronic Arts to confirm whether the in-game ads will return, and we will update this article as soon as we hear back.

Aaron Mamiit
Aaron received an NES and a copy of Super Mario Bros. for Christmas when he was four years old, and he has been fascinated…
Electronic Arts will remove Washington Redskins name, logo in Madden NFL 21
madden nfl 21 washington redskins in

Electronic Arts will remove all references to the Washington Redskins in Madden NFL 21, after the football team's announcement that it will be developing a new name.

Earlier this week, the Washington Redskins said that following a review that started July 3, it decided that the Redskins name and logo will be retired, after years of criticism that they perpetuate racist stereotypes against Native Americans. The team's new name and logo have not yet been revealed.

Read more
EA Sports promises stronger measures against racism, particularly for NHL games
ea sports nhl games fight against racism  20

Electronic Arts' EA Sports will be taking a stronger stand against racism in its games, with NHL titles, in particular, promising harsher penalties against players who will propagate offensive content.

Electronic Arts is just one of the several companies in the video game industry that have pledged support to the fight against racial injustice, as social unrest has swept across the United States after the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Take-Two Interactive shut down Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online for two hours, and Microsoft's Mojang has pledged to donate all profits from Minecraft sales on June 19, among others.

Read more
Electronic Arts sees cloud gaming as entry point for 1 billion players
xbox project xcloud hands on feat

Cloud gaming is still in its relative infancy, with services such as PlayStation Now and Google Stadia available and courting a relatively small group of players thus far. That could change, however, as Electronic Arts believes cloud gaming could open up video games to a massive new audience of players.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, EA Chief Technology Officer Ken Moss explained that he expects cloud gaming to add another 1 billion players onto the existing 2.6 billion in the world right now. This would mean nearly half of the planet would be playing video games of some sort, and Moss stressed that EA wasn't viewing Microsoft's xCloud service as a competitor to its own Project Atlas service. EA has a long history of supporting Microsoft in the past, with its EA Access subscription plan being exclusive to Xbox and PC for years before Sony eventually brought it to PlayStation 4 as well.

Read more