Microsoft patent describes in-game advertising triggered by boss fights, loading screens, and cutscenes
a month ago by FTonsilStones to c/games
Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a "credit"
If Microsoft lets the patent sit idle and refuses to license it to others, it would be a very good thing for a few years. Let's see what happens, though.
This is the time for the usual reminder that tech giants obtain something like 3000 patents each a year, by patenting everything under the sun. For the sole purpose that if one of them sues another for the violation of one such patent, the other can dig up a hundred of them to countersue.
Please drink verification can.
15 years ago and accurate as fuck
And retro games to emulate.
I remember feeling bad about how the original PvZ was absolutely wasted on EA, who made sequels that are just mobile slop. Relatively recently I found out that a huge community exists to make more of the good stuff and it’s legitimately overwhelming how much community stuff there exists for this one game alone.
The other obvious example is Minecraft which for me has basically just been a platform for individual mod packs that are basically their own games. And of course, Skyrim. I’ll get back to that one day.
Am I turning into those people I used to see all over forums when I was a kid talking about games from the 90s that didn’t seem that compelling to me?
They can even make Pokemon games fun to play as an adult.
Honestly the indies are the only ones worth your time and money. Just pirate the big studio bullshit
There was Prototype, which experimented with in game ads a while back. They sold ads on the billboards in NYC in the game. They seemed less obtrusive
Not Fafe Sor Uggos
I wouldn't mind ads like how Trackmania does it, you can disable them from options or have it show only TM related stuff (clubs, events, cotd).
Football manager have always had "let's kick racism out of football" and other NGOs represented on their banners - Because they had no clue what to do with it, I'm pretty sure there's a settings option to replace them with real paid ads now
Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a "credit"
As a millennial, I’ve watched the rise and fall of many things. Never thought I’d see the entire fall of gaming and so soon following its rise.
Indie games are booming lately, if you think you're witnessing the fall of gaming you're simply looking in the wrong place.
Both can be true
and those indie companies will get bigger, become corporatized, and continue the cycle.
Just like the ones before them did, just like the ones after them will.
The good thing is that creating a game is a task a person or a small team can accomplish even with non-AAA money, and there are many people out there who want to create something. So even if some of those indies become corrupted, there will always be more people out there who want to build their vision.
And tbh, if from this moment on only crap came out, we already have decades of great games to play - i for my part would never run out of games until the day i die even if i stopped adding stuff to my library - i am sitting on ca. 37000 titles at the moment. If the average time to complete is around 20 hours, that's around 83 years of continuous gaming, much more than my estimated remaining lifetime.
yeah, anyone can make a game. that game will probably be a slop generic asset flip game, but still technically a game.
to make a good game takes years, and money, and either knowledge or time available to be spent pursuing that knowledge..while also working an actual job to actually pay for all the bills for everyday life, in addition to what the game needs.
Bury your hobby with that attitude. There are and there always has been studios that decide intentionally to keep their projects small in scope.
Wealth doesn't trickle down, but losses do. Sadly, AAA studios collapsing will affect indies' abilities to get funding , so expect to feel some pain there too.
This is already being felt these last few years as many gaming publishers shifted to funding AI.
I think it's just the fall of the industry as we know it. I don't think gaming is going away anytime soon. But I do think we are about to see a very different industry in a few years. It probably won't look like it ever really has before. A massive indie space, with sparse few AAA titles.
Capitalism knows no sentimentality.
Microsoft != gaming.
That's mobile games basically
Its relevance increases every year. Truly it was prophetic.
ROFL Oh hell no, that would get me to never buy a game with this feature enabled. I would wait and figure out if said feature were present.
It's your 30th boss run. As you fuck up your sixth dodge roll in a row, the Troll picks up your character. He roars over the screams of your avatar as he crushes it's ribs in its massive fist.
Then, as he raises you high over head, and opens wide to chomp down on your head, the actions stops. The Troll turns to the camera and smiles, showing off brilliant pearly whites. "Colgate is recommended by 9/10 dentists.", the troll effuses over the screaming.
A text box appears.
'To proceed, type the number of dentists Colgate is recommended by, followed by this random number "N".'
I mean, if it just stopped at the troll saying "...9/10 dentists...." That would be pretty fucking funny
i think a popup will just show in the middle of the fight obscuring everything. "you have alloted 30minutes of boss battle, please watch ads to continue"
Microsoft don't have a distribution platform for PC games, even when they did no one used it. So they will only be able to introduce this in games that they are the publisher for, which is actually not that many games.
I'm very sure steam already prohibits in-game advertising. So Microsoft would have to distribute these games themselves and the moment that any publisher decides to go their own route they immediately decrease their revenue, even if nothing else has changed.
Just get an emulation handheld. With Steam offering ARM support through a translation layer, a strong one can even run a surprising array of PC games these days. My Retroid Pocket Flip 2 isn't even that nice as far as these things go, and it plays just about any 2D game I've tried and a lot of 3D from the '00s and early '10s, later if they don't press limits. You can also attach them to TVs and use normal controllers, including multiplayer.
Get? Use an old phone
Most people would count Black mirror as a dystopian science fiction nightmare. Microslop on the other hand saw “15 million credits” and pitched it to their shareholders.
Wait, someone should make a gaming organization that just thinks of the most outlandish and ghoulish things to patent them so the big corpos can't.
Wait, that's a cool idea
And then sue the shit of them whenever they implement it without realizing its patented.
Truth be told, that actually might be a neat thing to do. Imagine trying to think up really scummy ways to inject advertising into games, create new forms of mtx, etc. just to patent them and sit on those patents.
I feel like it would do a bit of the Streisand effect since by patenting them you're making them known, but that could be a bit better than letting someone else figure it out and get exclusive use of that patent for years. Either way anyone checking gaming patents can learn about it, but in one situation it's used for the duration of the patent and in the other its not.
You think Microsoft has consumers best interests in mind? Are you serious? Like are you genuinely caping for Microsoft or am I missing something here?
Yeah you are missing the /s at the end
Well to be fair it wasn’t there when I first commented bud.
That one black mirror episode where you had limited credits to skip ads and the forced you to keep your eyes open to watch the unskippable ad if you didn’t have the credits. Enough said.
Seriously, what the hell are they thinking? Did they not come up with anything better? Oh well, now we definitely know we’re living in a dystopia at least.
🎶You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store🎶
Then they do it on the OS, forcing people to swap to Linux - But the majority of users wouldn't know how
THIS is what the new head of gaming came up with to save xbox? Lol.
Sometimes I think due process should have its limits. When people suggest ideas that are so grossly enshittified, we should be able to beat them with sticks.

I AM A BANANA
Your mother's corpse had teeth, right?
Some teeth have fillings.. some fillings are made of valuable metals.
The Disney corporation should exhume the corpse of your loved ones and sell their teeth on eBay - they need to make money... right?
It's the only way to be sure every POSSIBLE angle has been milked.
You're comparing a non-consensual crime to a voluntary consumer product. Unlawfully exhuming a corpse leaves the victim and family with zero say in the matter.
A video game gives you complete choice, if a developer milks a game with ads, you can choose to uninstall it and give them zero dollars. Try making an analogy that actually deals with voluntary choice, because grave robbery isn't it.
Why not use a realistic analogy? Like how some car companies tried charging monthly subscriptions to activate built-in features like heated seats or remote start. BMW eventually killed that feature specifically because subscription sales were so extremely low. That's a real example of consumer choice driving corporate decisions, not grave robbery.
Laws (and crimes) and consumer behaviors are governed by popular concensus of what we, the body politic, are willing to tolerate - neither are absolutes, and both are subject to change.
A realistic analogy would make my point less clearly than an exaggerated cartoon.
If the consumer market, or the corporations that govern it, decide that grave robbery is to be tolerated as a for-profit adventure..
well, we've very few tools with with to oppose them.
(See also: the collapse of the biosphere)
Fortunately, in America at least, It's likely your loved ones lacked the medical insurance necessary to cover the cost of dental fillings.
I might agree that it's not morally wrong for them to add advertisements to milk more money out of people, but it's definitely artistically wrong in that they are hugely compromising the thing they are making just for extra money.
And one might further argue that it's morally wrong in that adding the advertisements is going to make the world a more frustrating, enshittified, dumbed-down place, just by a little bit.
Maybe a more apt comparison than "what if a Nazi killed you" or "what if somebody stole your mother's teeth" would be what if you owned a food company and filled your food with sticks and rocks to save money. People would not be obligated to buy it, but it's definitely wrong and doesn't do anybody any good.
I think they were trying to make an argument regarding ethics and morality and didn't do the best job by throwing in a strawman argument. That being said, television networks literally do it every day. That they're doing it is arguably unethical, but if you're expecting ethics and morality from a megacorp, especially Micro$oft, you're a fool.
Everything else you said stands. Don't use the product. Don't give the company your money. Nobody's forcing you to consume the media. If you do, don't complain, you're the fool who bought a game with ads.
Many are tired of being milked at every possible angle.
That's the problem. The milking.
"Just doing my job"
-Some random Nazi soldier
Why? Because I accept that businesses exist to make money, not out of the goodness of their hearts?
If you think a system or game is predatory, the solution is simple: stop supporting it. If enough people actually vote with their wallets, companies are forced to change because it hurts their bottom line. Throwing tantrums online doesn't change basic economic incentives, consumer behavior does
Why? Because I accept that businesses exist to make money, not out of the goodness of their hearts?
Yes, there's no reason you need to carry water for them. These dipshits shouldn't be able to find a single comment online supporting their behavior. They should feel shitty and worthless about what they're doing every second of their miserable existence. Companies can make plenty of money without enshittifying every single aspect of our lives.
If you think a system or game is predatory, the solution is simple: stop supporting it. If enough people actually vote with their wallets, companies are forced to change because it hurts their bottom line. Throwing tantrums online doesn’t change basic economic incentives, consumer behavior does
Sure, and I have a lower threshold for it than most but these companies will keep tightening the screws forever because there will always be new people coming in where the current level of bullshit is normal and they can push those people even further. My resistance to it alone accomplishes nothing.
Found the G.O.G. user
I'd suggest just setting aside some time on a weekend to just nuke windows and dive in. Something like cachy os is great for gaming, or bazzite if you'd like the system files indeleble like steam os.
I ended up wiping my last windows install a few months back and I don't miss it at all.
Make a live USB and just fiddle around with it. Note that a proper install on NVME will be much snappier. Don't nuke Windows until you understand the basics of Linux and have decided you want to daily drive it. Back up your data of course. Dual boot is often more trouble that it's worth, Windows loves to fuck up your bootloader and partitions, I got fed up unfucking it and began unplugging my Linux drives while updating Windows, and eventually just wiped it.
If you're serious about it, try to source hardware that is well supported rather than just slap it on a random machine and hope for the best.
I swapped to full-time Linux last October. It's literally no difference for me since I use zero highly specialized software except maybe my mouse and headset software.
My guess is it will go into Xbox/Gamepass on PC, and in MS games, but not in other launcher ecosystems.
Still, go ahead and start researching. Whether it’s this or something else, something will be the final straw for you in Windows, soon.
"Looks like you're about to kill the dragon. How about killing a sixpack of Miller Light?"
I'm generally against software patents, but I kinda like that this was patented. Maybe the patent will prevent other companies from enshittifying their games.
Or it will get licensed
While ad free implies being on some sort of game pass (fuck that now as it is), I would sooner go back to board games before ever even considering a game with this included. Companies buying virtual billboards was gross enough.
Big props to M$ for patenting this so when they inevitably fuck it up, it’s off the table for others.
board games
Don’t give them any ideas for trying to make persistent ads in those too. Monopoly would ironically be the first.
Putting aside that it's idiotic anticonsumer patent. May I just ask here. How tf this even gets patented? Should I patent the act of showing the advertisement sign to my neighbors every time they open their door, so I can get exclusivity rights ownership on doing such an idiotic thing? Like why it gets accepted? It doesn't sound even remotely technologically meaningful, neither it needs to withstand concurrency. It's just a waste of tax money.
How tf this even gets patented?
It hasn't, yet, afaict. Applying for a patent != it being granted.
As to the latent question of why Microsoft seems confident enough to try:
Because the times of a patent requiring to clear a reasonable inventive threshold (to actually be a motor for innovation) are far behind us. These days, patents' principal (not exclusive) purpose imho is so big corporations can sue each other to grab some of the others' earnings.
Loading screen games was patented, this doesn't seem much different.
I'll be over here painting my tabletop minis. Fuck this.
I am assuming this means they are planning on adding a "free with ads" tier to Xbox Cloud Game Streaming. Which doesn't really bother me that much if its a free tier. But if they add this to paid tiers or full games that would probably lose them a lot of goodwill that Asha seems to be pretty keen on regaining lately.
Doesn't mean M$ wouldn't take EA money to license it's use
just want to say there are at least 40,000 video games at least freely available on the internet of every conceivable genre. Some rivaling in quality to any game being made by these greedy publishers. Why does ANYONE bother with any shit they make anymore I just cannot understand. There is more gameplay out there than any person could play through in a lifetime.
Right?! I keep finding well-reviewed indie games on Steam for free every single day. And that's just from playing around with the search input, slowly putting in letters until a free game pops up.
Also, there are plenty of AA and AAA games available for free on the high seas! Just need to know where to look!
It really depends. There are great examples like DOTA2 and Path of Exile, and miserable examples, like every crappy gacha game.
Riot is kinda in the middle for me. Shame they nuked 2XKO after not telling anyone about it or catering to the people they neglected to tell about it.
What grinds my gears is when a game ends up not what you expected. One of the only games I returned was Doom Eternal, I bought it and hated it and this is from someone who's played all the doom games and even made maps for fun. I got it again for a dollar off of humble bundle and I will probably never play it.
Same goes for The Outer Worlds. I was excited about it. The whole epic launcher thing saved me the full price. Got it years later with all the dlc for $1. Played it and found it to not be as fun as I thought it was going to be.
What didn't you like about Doom Eternal? That one was widely praised.
I think part of the reason it was highly praised was because I imagine it was a lot of peoples first Doom game. Like Doom 2016 and Doom 3, it was also something a bit different.
I didn't like the scarcity of ammo and constantly have to see and hear the stupid chainsaw. And the cinematic kills everything got really annoying as well. The level design was okay, but felt very restricted compared to Doom 2016, also invisible walls. It felt slow and I didn't care for the jumping mechanics, what is this Super Mario? I didn't make it to playing it two hours since I returned it, I'm sure it probably got better but I didn't feel like playing it.
Oh, then wait and see if game has advertising tripe in game and make sure not to buy. Got it.
Reminder: mobile games have had ad = benefit for over a decade. However, this sounds like the reverse (get a credit = no ads or ad free time).
Roblox has had integrated ads for some time, typically diegetic ads on in game billboards. Some of these integrations go less noticed because of the parallel to the real world & they aren’t disruptive of gameplay flow.
Microsoft is welcome to try this pattern, but it’ll likely require developers to be heavily incented to do so. Given that MS just downsized, meaning they have less first parties & have rightfully angered some pockets of the game development world, I feel like their only option here is lots of money or force the loop. Forcing this loop will damage the total addressable market, unless it’s used for F2P games.
Long story, short: they may be patenting this, but they have a long, uphill battle to get this to work in any sort of paid, AAA game/product. They would need an amazing draw to pull people passed it, and a lot of their brands don’t have the draw they used to (see Halo Infinite).
It's just as shitty and funny as the one where Sony had a similar-looking mechanism where the viewer of their TVs is disrupted by an ad, then has to shout the name of the product to banish it away.
McDonald's!! \o/
I'm sure this has been done before. stupid web clicker city builder or whatever that if you watch advert you et more in game credits. It might not be exactly the same but surely not novel enough to be patentable, prior art. Or in this case prior twat.
USPTO changed its rules in 2013; prior art only counts if it was patented first. This is why Nintendo has been trying to patent stuff other companies are doing that is similar to their games (eg PalWorld).
Part of me wishes Nintendo was doing this to lose on purpose so there is precedent to not use this against them in the future, but I’ve become far too pessimistic for a “good-guy Nintendo” arc…
We are assisting to triple A games fall and indie's boom
There is a reason I hardly play on mobile.
I'd suggest looking through F-Droid, IzzyOnDroid and other FOSS repos for mobile games. I've found a bunch of mobile games that have as much depth as the ad-laden ones.
Hell, the reason I got back into mobile gaming recently was because the developer of Poinpy decided to make their game free on Google Play, remove microtransactions, and make the entire game playable from start to finish with extra modes. It feels like a Nintendo game in the best possible way. The main character Poinpy even looks like Kirby, which is reinforced by the ending of the game.
It's ironic that even Nintendo hasn't gotten mobile gaming down pat, either going the gacha route with Mario Kart Tour and Fire Emblem: Waifus, or trying to do the paid model and failing at it with Mario Run and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
"to deliver last blow to the final boss, please watch these 10 minutes of ads. failure to do so will restore the boss to full health"
so microsoft made games even less playable and fun my god time to cancel microsoft we need the ai datacenter companies bankrupt as the epstein class came for our games too the whole list of top 5-10 companies in spy needs to go bankrupt for the good of gaming and the world
Makes you wonder given the timing of announcing every tier of game pass will now include (very) limited monthly cloud gaming hours. I think I saw ultimate would include 15 h/mo. With yet unannounced pricing on how much an extra hour would cost, what if ads end up being their solution… 🤔
Lol, who the duck only games for 15 hrs/month
most patents never see implementation
This is to refine existing F2P advert inserts so the timing is less abrupt. It is also for an ad-supported game-pass tier so they can inject ads into any game in the library.
Will it mean more developers/publishers choose to inject ads into games? Maybe. But plenty of games already have convenient spots for ads that don't require this kind of tech, like match queuing, etc. and they don't run ads.
Pretty sure that in a decade, the norm will be that ads are absolutely everywhere. Only holdouts (think Kojima etc) and tiny indie setups will be able to avoid it. Every AA+ title will be riddled with it, and just like you can't imagine people just "accepting" that today, we couldn't imagine people "just accepting" microtransactions fifteen years ago. Yet here we are.
Kojima put monster energy ads into death stranding
Ads are already everywhere, nobody said anything about it being unimaginable. You have product placement (especially IP crossovers) in lots of live service games. That doesn't mean you won't be able to pay for an ad free experience. You can watch a movie on cable TV with ads every 15min, or buy the movie, or rent it, or stream it ad-supported/ad-free or go to the movie-theater with front-end ads. If you don't want to watch Dune with a commercial break interrupting the middle, there's an option for that.
Or the ads are incidental to the aesthetics of the activity, like sponsor ads on sports jerseys, in the stadium, and TV/stream. So what if the car chasing James Bond is an Audi because they paid for that.
I'm not pro-advertising, I do think "all major gaming experiences will be ruined with advertising" is a bit overblown.
Sounds like a whole lotta words to say the future of non shit entertainment flies a black flag
just want to say there are at least 40,000 video games at least freely available on the internet of every conceivable genre. Some rivaling in quality to any game being made by these greedy fucks. Why does ANYONE bother with any shit they make anymore I just cannot understand. There is more gameplay out there than any person could play through in a lifetime.
Patent?
Suicide.
Just when I thought we have reached maximum ad saturation. Do they think these ads actually do anything anymore or is it just wishful thinking pushed by marketing execs? I'm waiting for electronic door locks to make you watch an ad to enter your home or car.
I "want" ads in games to be integrated like into YouTube videos.
Cutscene:
"Oh my god, the Shadow Legion have acquired my location, Lt. John McShootyguy, you need to come to my place ASAP, and help me defeat them!"
"Roger!"
Ad: "The real world also has Shadow Legions hunting for personal information, but there's no John McShootyguy to help you. However, you have today's sponsor, DeleteMe. Register with the code John20% to get 20% off of your first three months of DeleteMe."
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@lemmy.world

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
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good thing they patented this shit, it can die with them now
save