A couple of days ago it was announced that Gearbox Software directly made a deal with Double Fusion to handle the in game advertising for their upcoming game releases. Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software has put out quite an update on the situation. "We respect any contempt for exploitive advertising that negatively effects the integrity or the quality of the game because we, as hardcore gamers, share that same contempt." Pitchford opens with.

At this time Gearbox has not actually made any specific commitments for any of their announced titles to advertisers. "We partnered with Double Fusion because we believe they approach this kind of thing with the right attitude and because we wanted to be in control of these kinds of decisions for some of our games." Pitchford explains.

It is also interesting to note that Double Fusion mostly has made deals with the publishers of games and not the developers. Gearbox Software is going about this differently as they Pitchford says to have more direct control over how potential brands are placed in their games. Below is an example of context sensitive placement as described by Pitchford.