Proving once more that sometimes companies don’t learn and want to stubbornly make arbitrary decisions: unskippable ads are returning to the NBA 2K franchise. Yes, just two entries after making the very same mistake, NBA 2K21 will feature similar advertisements once more during loading screens. The news comes confirmed to us from fellow Melbourne games publication (and friend of Checkpoint) Stevivor.
Appearing in a pre-game video titled “MyTEAM Season 2, Episode 7,” an advertisement for the recently released Oculus Quest 2 appears. It’s an ad that can’t be skipped and also starts automatically in a loading screen that already is longer than the runtime of said ad. This appears across copies of NBA 2K21 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and even PC (no matter your SSD’s processing speed). We’ve also attached an example video below of the advertisement on Xbox One, courtesy of Stevivor, who also have done the handy job of recording that.
Just two months ago, EA pulled a similar move, adding in-game advertisements in UFC 4. It’s not too different a story, with the only difference here being the team was quick to retract these ads.
Already NBA 2K21 is a game with a full premium price. Combine this with the messy upgrade path for playing it on next-gen and it doesn’t spell out too much good will for its fans. As of yet, 2K are yet to comment on the matter.
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
