Last week, Facebook announced that it will begin testing in-headset ads for the Oculus Quest soon. It stated that it will kick off the process with Resolution Games" Blaston and a couple of other unnamed developers. Today, Resolution Games has backed out of the trial in a major setback for Facebook considering no other developer willing to participate in the test has been revealed yet.
The move to introduce in-headset ads in Blaston faced some pushback particularly because it is a paid game with a $9.99 price tag, so players obviously did not take kindly to the announcement and showed their displeasure by leaving negative reviews on the store listing. In a statement to The Verge, Resolution Games" CEO Tommy Palm has announced that the company is reversing course following feedback from players, saying that:
We appreciate all of the feedback and thoughts on the Oculus ad test for Blaston and other games that was announced last week. Some good points have been made, and we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test. Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test in Blaston.
[...] We love this domain as much as the most avid players. If ads in VR become inevitable as it has on other platforms, we want to ensure that while we have this chance to start over and do it right, we do just that. We welcome any and all your feedback along the way so we can have a constructive conversation around this and create the best path forward.
The executive has hinted that it may decide to continue the in-headset ads trial in one of its free titles like Bait! in the future, but those plans haven"t been finalized yet either. It remains to be seen how Facebook does damage control in this recent development and potentially tap some other major developer who is willing to show in-headset ads in their Oculus Quest game.
Source: The Verge