Valve Signs Deal with IGA for In-Game Advertising
IGA Worldwide announced that they have signed a deal with Valve for an undisclosed amount of cash to put advertising in one of the most if not THE most popular online shooter of today, Counterstrike.
Are gaming ads really that bad? If you belong to any message board it is no doubt up in arms about this because most gamers enjoy bitching as their full time job. I love how we can all bitch about ads in games but on 90% of the gaming websites out there, you can barely navigate a site due to the fact that it is plastered with ads. Banners, flash ads, annoying ads with sound, click through's, you name it and the gaming sites have it. Yet the gamers can navigate their way through these sites without a peep. As soon as ads in an actual game are announced it's the 2nd coming of Jesus himself. [Which will probably be sooner than the next coming of Duke Nukem]
If Valve had any self respect, they'd limit the ads to the soda machines, PC's and other items that won't distract from the gameplay. I guess I'd be pretty pissed if a billboard for GMC popped up on one of the walls in Dust, but I'd also be surprised that Valve would let that happen.
3 comments:
Well playing a game and using media are two different things. But point taken.
As long as it's not obnoxious I don't have a problem with something like that.
I think the biggest issue about them doing this with 1.6 is that they no longer update the game, and Valve will be attempting to pull ad revenue out of gaming servers that are not paid for by Valve. For example, I've helped administrate a CS 1.6 community and server for a couple years now, and our server is paid for with donations from the players and any extra is covered by the main server admin. Why should Valve get to make a profit now off of somebody else's money?
From the perspective of strictly a gamer it may not seem to be much, but when you consider what they're actually doing here, it's a lot worse. You mention gaming websites having ads. In that case, the website is going to be making money off of any ads they display. This move by Valve would be comparable to Valve forcing a gaming website to have ads (I know that's not possible but just imagine the same situation here) and then also taking all ad revenue generated from said ads for themselves. Unless I'm missing something, this is screwing over anyone that is paying for a CS server. It surely doesn't cost Valve anything for the upkeep of the thousands of servers that are out there right now. The only thing they do for the game is keep a master server list for their in-game browser. And provide Steam authentication.
Solution to the server issue: Don't play Valve's games on it. If you are playing in their virtual world, they can do whatever they want. It is their right to make money off of everyone as long as they are playing a Valve game. The comparison of Valve making a website contain ads and then reaping the benefits doesn't fit here unless said website is owned by Valve.
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