Fans sighed but understood when EA's free-to-play Skate reboot from 2025 started its ongoing Early Access period with microtransactions, but EA vice president of advertising Alexander Dao seems curious to see if that sigh could turn into a dry-heave as the publisher toys with in-game ads.
Dao recommends some developers start designing in-game ads during their production periods, telling The Game Business in a new interview, "As you think about new games that are coming out, as you think about free-to-play experiences that are happening on the console side – like our Skate game – those are opportunities where, if you actually design them with the right advertising and brand experience in there from the get-go, it just makes it easier."
Earlier this summer, EA established the EA Advertising "platform" for brands eager to test gameplay ad placements, emphasizing in an announcement that EA Sports games were particularly ripe for "participatory experiences where brands come to play."
If you're gagging, that means it's working.
At the time, EA had already introduced the home improvement store Lowe's to Madden NFL, partnered with Visa credit cards, and added Vans shoes to Skate. But Dao reminds developers, too, to invest in the "huge opportunity" of in-game ads.
"Building the advertising experience is really retrofitting it in," Dao says about the current state of in-game ads, but if developers help, "it makes it feel more native and it creates more flexibility in the types of brands that can come in and out."
I recoil at the idea of advertisements feeling "native" to video games that aren't inherently advertisements, like the promotional games of yore spanning diet sodas, fast food, and beer. At the same time, EA Advertising is really just making an enthusiastic return to those Wild West days of video games between the '80s and early 2000s when games like NFS: Underground 2 were glad to laser-blast you with Best Buy billboards while you were cruising.
Many of my favorite games from childhood were congested with ads, and the in-game product placement in the dress-up game Stardoll at age 10 still influences my closet with fashion brands like Miss Sixty and DKNY. It worked!
I find that frightening – especially now that companies have more opportunities via smart refrigerators and unskippable YouTube ads to tattoo our retinas with their stuff.
In 2026, game developers are already tasked with navigating mass layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations – if EA ends up successful in guiding them to create more in-game ads, forcing them to obey the financial interests of a company that could dissolve their job at any moment, then there will be no more room for artistry. Just fear and Mountain Dew assets.
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