EA apologises and removes ads from UFC 4

A fairly common practice during the last few years has been to launch games without any greedy microtransactions or other ways to make money that makes it less fun. That way, the publishers can send out press releases about their titles being pro-consumer and also avoid getting complaints in reviews.

But after a couple of weeks, some publishers seem to be sneaking these aspects into games. Stuff like microtransactions 'pay to win' and other ways of nickel and diming the users is added and the games frankly become way less fun. But then people have already bought the games and the reviews are written. The last prime example of this very dubious method comes from EA.

During the last few days, gamers have been furious over the fact that EA added regular ads to UFC 4. They expected the community to not make to much fuss about it, but it resulted in a lengthy Reddit thread filed under "assholedesign". Fortunately, EA heard all these complaints and took action. A spokesperson from EA wrote the following response:

"Earlier this week, the team turned on ad placements in EA SPORTS UFC 4 that appeared during the "Replay" moments in gameplay. This type of advertising inventory is not new to the UFC franchise, though we have typically reserved displaying ads to specific main menu tiles or Octagon logo placement.

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. 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. Thank you for your continued feedback on EA SPORTS UFC 4."

Basically, complaining about these greedy practices can actually make a difference. Kudos to EA for removing the ads, but next time we'd prefer if they weren't added at all without clear communication from the very beginning.