Last week Facebook Reality Labs began an experiment with advertising in virtual reality and rather than using one of the many VR dev studios Facebook owns, it used a third-party dev.
That third-party was Resolution Games and its VR title Blaston was the subject of an advertising test.
That test was very short-lived though as Resolution Games has announced that it will no longer implement the test because, “Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test.”
We suspect that like ourselves, many players recoiled at the idea of seeing advertising in a paid title. Sure, Blaston isn’t expensive, at $6.99 (it’s currently on sale) it’s rather affordable but, as with most things, it’s the principle of the matter.
However, Resolution Games will still be testing ads in VR, just not in a title it’s selling for money. The developer’s free game Bait will become the subject of a test “sometime in the future”.
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. We look forward to seeing you in the arena and hope you try the Crackdown Update that went live today!
— Blaston (@BlastonGame) June 21, 2021
Many people have weighed in on this matter with some thanking Resolution Games for stopping the test. There are however, some folks who empathise with the developer for not being able to use in-game advertising as a revenue stream, nevermind that this was just an experiment.
We hope that this experiment shows Facebook and developers that gamers don’t want advertising in paid titles, especially paid titles in VR.
This isn’t the first time Oculus and Facebook have had to deal with backlash. Just a few months ago every Oculus user was forced to start logging in with a Facebook account leading to concerns regarding Facebook’s use of user data.
While Facebook Reality Labs says it won’t collect personal data used to serve ads (it’s all stored on your device) that could change in the future.
Right now at least developers are listening to players, even if Facebook by all accounts, isn’t.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
