EA is prototyping in-game ads even as we speak

Electronic Arts has a long, storied history of trying to wring more money out of gamers after they've purchased a game - now, it appears, the company's hard at work on its next generation of in-game ads.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson admitted as much on the company's Q4 earnings call: when an analyst asked about the market opportunity for more dynamic ad insertion across more traditional AAA games," he said the company's already working on it.

We have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences," said Wilson.

Sean Hollister at The Verge

Ads in games are definitely not new - we've seen countless games built entirely around brands, like Tapper for Budweiser, Pepsiman, or Cool Spot for 7-Up - and banner ads and product placement in various games has been a thing for decades, too. It seems like EA wants to take this several steps further and use things like dynamic ad insertion in games, so that when you're playing some racing game, you'll get an ad for your local Hyundai dealer, or an ad for a gun store when you're playing GTA in the US.

Either way, it's going to make games worse, which is perfectly in line with EA's mission.