Companies in the games industry have figured out a stupid number of ways to try and get as much money out of their paying customers as possible, but they never seem to run out of new ideas. Recently, it was reported that ads for Ubisoft’s Black Friday sale had started popping up in-game for some players playing older Assassin’s Creed titles, which, as you might imagine, sparked the ire of many in the community.
Ubisoft has, however, tried to assuage concerns. In a statement provided to The Verge, the company has attributed the appearance of the aforementioned ads to a “technical error”. Though it hasn’t gone into detail on what the error in question was, it does say it addressed the issue as soon as it was made aware of it.
“We have been made aware that some players encountered pop-up ads while playing certain Assassin’s Creed titles yesterday,” Ubisoft said. “This was the result of a technical error that we addressed as soon as we learned of the issue.”
The question, of course, is whether the ads were actually technical errors or if Ubisoft was using them in a limited manner as a testbed of sorts for future plans. If, contrary to the company’s statement, the latter was true, it should be interesting to see what Ubisoft’s takeaway from the reaction of the community will be.