Ubisoft Reassures Players: Pop-Up Ad in Assassin's Creed Was a Mistake, Not a New Trend

Ubisoft has found itself in a bit of a situation when an Assassin's Creed gamer encountered what looked like an intrusive pop-up advertisement in the middle of their session. The incident, which was captured and shared on platform X by the player, involved a promotion for the latest installment in the series, Assassin's Creed Mirage, that appeared unexpectedly after closing the in-game map while playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

The community didn't hesitate to express their displeasure at this discovery, leading to some agitation among fans. However, Ubisoft's spokesperson, Fabien Darrigues, moved quickly to clarify the event. Darrigues explained that the pop-up, far from being a deliberate move, was the unintended consequence of a glitch. He stated that the issue came to their attention when players started reporting these pop-up ads appearing during gameplay. Ubisoft then pinpointed the problem to a technical error, which they rectified as soon as they were made aware.

Despite the clarification, the trust between Ubisoft and its community seems fragile. Some gamers speculated that the explanation was just a smokescreen to obscure the company's real ambitions of integrating more advertisements into its games. These suspicions haven't been helped by Ubisoft's history of questionable in-game monetization strategies, such as selling cosmetic items for real money in games that already come with an upfront cost.

There's also been discontent regarding Ubisoft's flirtation with blockchain and NFTs, specifically with its upcoming title Champions Tactics and its controversial integration of prohibitively expensive NFT-based DLC.

In any case, Ubisoft has reiterated that there are absolutely no plans to inject pop-up ads into any of its games, whether they be single-player titles or otherwise. Additionally, no further incidents of the ad materializing outside the expected in-game store, where it is supposed to reside, have been reported following the initial claim. It appears that a recent update meant to introduce ads in the game menus inadvertently caused this unexpected bug. Thankfully, another update has been swiftly deployed to solve the problem, returning the gaming experience to its standard ad-free state.