After significant backlash, Assassin’s Creed developer and publisher, Ubisoft, has responded to the recent issue in regards to pop-up ads appearing in their older games. The issue began when a Reddit user reported sightings of the pop-up on Xbox and PlayStation versions of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for the latest title, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, with the ad appearing whenever the user opens the in-game map.
The French video game publisher went on X, formerly known as Twitter, to explain that the pop-up was a result of a “technical error” and that the ad was meant to appear in the main menu instead. According to the company’s post, they have removed the disruptive pop-up immediately.
We have been made aware that some players encountered a pop-up message in-game while playing certain Assassin’s Creed titles yesterday. This was the result of a technical error that has now been fixed.
Our intention was to display a promotion for Assassin’s Creed Mirage as part…
— Assassin’s Creed (@assassinscreed) November 24, 2023
Though this has been addressed as a mistake by Ubisoft, many believe that this was intentional, as the incident occurred on Black Friday, 24 November 2023. Furthermore, X’s Community Notes feature shows that this wasn’t the first time this happened, with video evidence showing that the same incident occurred four years ago.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend that large companies are pushing for, as Microsoft has been displaying full screen pop-up ads on the Xbox to promote its own games the moment the console is booted up – something that has been occurring earlier this year.
Just got an in-game advertisement when I tried to go to the map
byu/triddell24 inxboxone
In any case, Ubisoft stated the company will investigate the issue further and why it occurred, but a vast majority of comments from users, both on X and on Reddit, are not buying the game developer’s excuse.
(Source: Reddit, X [1], [2], The Verge)
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