The Facebook-owned VR headset company Oculus is facing severe backlash from its angry user base over in-game advertisements. The company recently introduced advertising in its Virtual Reality-based titles, and fanboys already seem to be tilted over the same.
To date, discreet advertising in a video game was received quite positively by gamers. For example, the brand promotion of a cold drink company in FIFA seems okay as long as it’s not intrusive. But, as we all know, Facebook being Facebook, pushed gamers to their limits.
And the gaming community backfired. Oculus and Facebook started testing ads in the Blaston game. Players from all over the world review-bombed the game, leaving scores of negative reviews highlighting the advertising issue.
The result? Resolution games quickly reverted the changes. The developers released a statement saying,
After listening to player feedback, we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test. Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test.
Virtual Reality headsets are the next logical step in the world of gaming. After all, everyone wants to experience the world video games have to offer. But the problem with Oculus is that the platform is built with advertising in mind. So it seems quite unlikely Oculus will be ad-free in the near future, at least not in the coming two to three years.
This explains the reason why you need to tie your Facebook account to your Oculus Quest headset. This helps them in terms of engagement and targets gamers with ads according to their preferences.
Having said that, ads in games are not a good thing unless it’s a free-to-play title. We hope that this does not become the norm in the coming years because ads in VR are quite annoying to deal with.
