NBA 2K19 Adds Unskippable Ads, Raising Concerns About Premium Games

It seems unbelievable but back in the day systems such as loot boxes, in-game ads, and microtransactions were isolated to the free-to-play market. Now, these systems have become standard within premium priced games and now, similar to Street Fighter V's temporary addition of in-game ads.

Capcom placed sponsor ads on various fighters and would reward players who watched the content with in-game currency. Capcom would remove the in-game ads following the backlash.

Now, it seems that 2K is taking notes and decided notes and implement a similar system in NBA 2K19. 

One Redditor in the thread, xPray4Deathx, posted a video of how long the game takes to load now, explaining,

Tested this out with a video, Sadly OP is right. Takes about 1:07 to load to tip off with ads. Takes 1:07 to load game (to tip off) with skipping when can. (Can’t skip ad, load is in bottom right, about 15 seconds of ad with game loaded.) Testing the advertisement during load of game. Once game load is complete, you HAVE TO WATCH the rest of the ad and can not skip. Pathetic, choice by 2K to include ads in a 60$ [sic] game.

A r/NBA2K moderator, yyy2k, suggested “turn[ing] 2KTV off in the main menu settings.” but users have indicated that the ads play no matter what. What's strange is the bottom label says "Game Loaded" which means the player has to look at the ad despite able to play the game. 

This isn't the first time this has happened. If you search back in the history of the subReddit you can find this post from CrayCray6891 which basically has the same problem.

Are you kidding me? They are now making us watch commercials in this game. I play video games because tv is boring and I hate commercials. This might be the final nail in the coffin for me with this game.

Some hypothesize that after the game went on sale that this was 2K's way of continually generating revenue from its existing player base. This would be problematic as a similar system could be implemented in other video games, extending load times for ad time. 

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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