Facebook’s first VR ad partner for Oculus has already backed out

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Facebook recently announced that it would be testing out advertisements inside of Oculus Quest apps. But the company didn’t anticipate the amount of backlash that this would cause. Now, one of the company’s first developers to agree to test out in-app advertisements has already backed out.

Late last week, Facebook confirmed that it would be testing out in-app advertisements and that it was already working with a few developers who agreed to participate. One of those developers, Resolution Games, had planned to allow in-app ads on its VR shooter Blaston.

According to The Verge, people were not happy about this. Blaston is a paid game, and many gamers don’t like the idea of having advertisements be part of a game that they paid full price for. For that reason, Resolution Games has decided to pull Blaston out of the list of apps participating in Facebook’s in-app advertisements. Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm said this:

“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.”

The developer hasn’t decided to completely pull out of Facebook’s ad plans, however. Because most of the negative feedback came from the idea of ads in a full-price game, Resolution Games is thinking about testing ads in one of its free-to-play games, Bait!

While most gamers, including myself, probably agree that advertisements in-game are probably not a great idea, it definitely works much better for a free-to-play game.

Gamers don’t want to spend full price on a game just to be bombarded with ads. But if Facebook is dead set on in-app advertisements, putting them inside a free-to-play title could be justified, especially if the game’s development benefits from increased revenue.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Cyberpunk 2077 is finally back on the PlayStation Store after six months of punishment
• The Xbox Design Lab is back in action with plenty of options for your next custom controller
• Sony now has a PS5 Beta program – here’s how to sign up for it
• The new Atari VCS console is finally available for purchase