Released in August, EA Sports UFC 4 did fairly well with critics with changes to core mechanics like submissions, ground and pound and so on being praised. However, Electronic Arts courted controversy recently when it added in-game adds to the title. As noted on Reddit, these ads popped up before and after replays, promoting the release date for The Boys on Amazon.
Such was the backlash that EA has disabled the ads. It also released a statement to Eurogamer, noting that, “This type of advertising inventory is not new to the UFC franchise, though we have typically reserved displaying ads to specific main menu tiles or Octagon logo placement. It is abundantly clear from your feedback that integrating ads into the Replay and overlay experience is not welcome. The advertisements have been disabled by the team and we apologize for any disruption to gameplay that players may have experienced.”
The publisher also felt that this change “should have been communicated with players ahead of time and that’s on us. We want to make sure our players have the best possible experience playing EA Sports UFC 4, so ad integration in the Replay and overlay experience will not be reappearing in the future. Thank you for your continued feedback on EA Sports UFC 4.”
Such ads have propagated sports games for quite some time now, seen with NBA 2K19 and it’s ads that couldn’t be skipped. EA is no stranger to controversy with its sports titles especially considering the lack of improvements to the Madden NFL series in recent years or FIFA’s microtransactions. However, such a move is odd for EA Sports UFC 4 especially when the company took to removing Ultimate Team mode in this iteration.
Regardless, in the meantime, fans won’t have to worry about pre- and post-replay ads ruining their experience. Stay tuned for more details and updates on the game, especially with reports of it coming to Xbox Series X and PS5 sometime in the future. Check out our review here in the meantime.
