Valve and Advertisers Kiss and Make Up

If these ads only appear on private servers, etc. then thats alright since they need to pay for bandwith somehow. But if I start getting ads in Steam and other games I'll pretty much tell Valve to fuck off.

Fuck advertising in games, honestly. We've had games for how long now without that becoming a deciding factor in production. Just like this bullshit price raise (I own a 360, I'm feeling the hurt on those prices), which have been debunked by anyone who cares to think about it. I've worked in the game industry for many years and the only reason why companies do negative things like this is because the bottom line can always appear to need more padding, regardless of the negative reaction.

I love me some Burnout, but the axe deoderant ads are seriously annoying, and out of place, as are the battlefield ads. Ditto for the Nokia ads randomly placed in Ultimate Spider-Man

I love me some Project Gotham Racing 3, and at least there they are done in a way similar to actual race ads, but they don't need to be there, especially in addition to the 10 dollar price hike.

Sympathizers who say that since advertising is a part of our regular lives it should be in games too are just being ridiculous. Do these people like having a pretty vista being blocked by advertising in real life? Do these people like how most major stadiums are owned by companies who rename them despite the public contribution to their construction? Some things, like web-sites face choices between popularity, advertising, and charging for some/all of their content.

Do you really want to play at the Taco Bell Counter-Strike server and have a gun that shoots tacos at people...in a sort-of-realism game. Yes it'd be funny for five minutes, but then it isn't anymore and you're stuck in taco-bell's land, not the land of someone who cares about the game.

Just get parents to boycott the companies that are advertising in overtly violent games like CS:S

problem solved.

Pehaps the working together part means Valve gets a kickback. So Valve makes more money and we all like it when the developer makes more money, right?

And if we're really lucky, Valve will make their server browser worth a damn and clearly mark the sponsored servers. So you can avoid ads if you want. Heck, maybe the sponsored servers will be the best ones since they're paid for externally.

Just trying to put an optimisic spin on it

how about they advertise a fix for the favorites list not fucking working.

As long as there is at least one CS mission where the terrorists try to blow up a McDonalds I am totally down for that! Otherwise the advertising will seem out of place and not fair to the player.

Translation: They paid us money out of court not to bring a lawsuit and cause a problem with their publicity stunt (which was halted). In exchange we agreed that maybe in the future we might consider this a viable transaction if/when the details are explained legally. This does NOT mean advertising will be shown, but it DOES mean that all future advertisers know their legal boundaries and know who they should deal with in the future.

C'mon people... are you really stupid enough to think valve would LIKE to advertise Subway commercials? Of all the gaming gods I think valve (and "love you forever 3d realms") are the last to resort to outside funding just for the sake of having fat wallets.

I am wondering why my first post here was removed. Anyway. I highly doubt Valve is going into in-game advertising. It's not like they are losing money and need to resort to this. Maybe someone could get confirmation before people jump to conclusions?

I'll step right up and vote with my dollar to opt out of this practice before it gains any momentum. One would have to expect a company to slide this in to a game that's already been purchased by a ton of people. It's grimey buisness, but that's what i've come to expect from these guys anyway. Nothing suprises me after the whole Ati voucher coupon B.S. they pulled and pushing back HL2 a year less than a week before it was supposed to be released. What's worse is the amount of people that puff up their feathers to defend these choads.

The announcement implies that Valve will be working with IGA in the future for other in-game advertisement campaigns.


Ugh...

Valve and IGA look forward to discussing mutually beneficial opportunities in the future.

There is only one way to make it mutually beneficial.

It implies that there might be something in the future, yes, but taking into account that it's no more than marketing talk and looking where it comes from I doubt very much that we'll see advertisment in any Valve game in the forseeable future.

They settled their differences, that IGA basically used the popularity of CS:S to market their oh so awesome ingame ad system... probably with money... I don't know... but that's it. Right now, I have the feeling, IGA is doing the very same thing again... advertising themselves by using the popularity of Valve Software and implying that there's a connection between the two companies that goes beyond just that one fuckup on IGAs part.

All the more reason to never buy another Valve game: if they resort to this garbage.

every headshot earns you a coupon for $3 off any sandwich at subway.
buy 2 flashbangs and get a mcfrag grenade for free
only true snipers use AWP's firing the infamous WHOPPER bullet

i don't like it... if valve puts advertisments in a game i paid for i'm gonna be pissed... at least give us whatever games you're going to put the ads in for free if you're going to do that... like tv does.

Last I checked ISPs don't disallow 3rd party ads on websites they host for their customers... why should this be different?

If I wanted to buy the bandwidth and software required to host N servers, why can't I put ads in them to pay for the costs the same way I could should these servers report their statistics to a webpage?

I'm ok with privately owned servers selling in game ad's if it helps pay for bandwith. But when the publisher starts putting ad's in private servers and not paying them for it, I have a problem.

So Valve basically caved in to the $.

Thank god that situation got re$olved