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Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
Mark Zuckerberg’s ongoing quest to turn every Facebook property into ad-ridden real estate hit a snag this week when the only virtual reality game to publicly display Oculus VR ads (rightly) slipped.
Originally, Facebook set out to test the first iteration of VR ads in Blaston, a $10 multiplayer title for Oculus Quest created by virtual reality publisher Resolution Games. The idea of being attacked with VR ads in a game is bad enough, but the fact that players would get hit on a game they already paid for was enough to put some players on edge. Right after Facebook announced its plans to blow up Blaston users with ads, the game’s page on the Oculus Store was hit with one-star reviews.
“If we were OK with ads, we would play some of the thousands of free ad-supported games instead of buying what we think is a premium product. Remove ads or refund us,” one reviewer wrote.
“Why on earth would I see ads for a game that paid full asking price for a headset that I paid full asking price for?” asked another. “Are they really the cash-strapped that they need to get every penny out of us?
Less than a week after these reviews started pouring in, Blastone backed out. “After listening to players’ feedback, we realized that Blaston is not the best for this type of ad test. Therefore, we are no longer planning to carry out the test,” the company wrote in a Twitter thread posted on Monday afternoon. About three hours later, the company added that it had plans to roll out a “temporary test” of Oculus VR ads in another one of its games – a free-to-download hunting title called Bait!.
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We still don’t know as much about what ads will look like in an Oculus environment, and whether these ads will be as much a display of privacy as countless other Facebook ad products. In a blog post published by Facebook announcing its first VR ad experiences, the company promised that the company would only capture a minimal amount of data from any ads streamed on the Oculus platform; Metrics like whether you clicked on an ad or chose to close it, for example. The post promised that certain on-device data — such as your movements, any sound your microphone picks up, or height, weight, and gender data you provide — will not be used to target ads. Whether you really believe what Facebook says is up to you.
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