I’m ok with a 1 time showing of a specific ad because they are doing it as part of their media campaign to get people to buy their product. However, Blizz needs to:
- provide a clearly labeled opt-out link
- the opt-out setting should be tracked on their servers so that I don’t have to opt-out across multiple devices
If D4 is going to have a steady stream of new ads on some sort of regular basis then there needs to be an opt-out to all if I don’t own the game. I haven’t purchased D4 and I’m not interested in buying it so get rid of any ideas about spamming the cosmetic/transmog shop items at me. I don’t care if they are selling pink toe nail paint for the in-game mounts. I don’t care if one can transform the horse into a turtle, a unicorn, a t-rex, a giant cucumber emoji, and I want nothing to do with the seasonal advert blitz. I’m not interested in battle passes. No thank you. Keep your product. I DO NOT WANT IT, and I don’t want to know about all of your cutesie and neato trinkets/charms for it. I’m not interested in any mugs, t-shirts, hats, panties, thongs, scratch-n-sniff stickers, posters and other works of art, candles, collectibles, or other merch. I am not concerned with BlizzCon at this time.
The data tracking on their servers should not be a problem because I know that they are data harvesting other info. D3, D4, and D2R multiplayer are currently online only so all of the activity can be tracked on their servers. If the opt-out has to be per game I’m OK with that.
Here is why I’m making this post. First, Leviathan MVP said to post in this forum and second…
During the D4 betas once a player crossed specific thresholds in the game, the player was presented with a “Pre-Order D4 now” advert. This was in the beta game. Ok fine. If they want to use the beta as a marketing tool, so be it. This happened for each of the public betas I participated in. There have been a few updates to the launcher itself since the first public beta. What spurred me to make this post is the following:
- A recent update to the Launcher. I installed and restarted the launcher. BAM! Pop-up D4 buy now advert. Ok that was not good. You have to click to get passed it. I click to get passed it.
- The rotating advert that is on each game page, has a D4 buy now advert. OK. This isn’t a pop-up, I’ll tolerate this since I can pause the rotator and it does not block me from launching a game or interacting with the other elements in the window.
- I noticed a driver update was needed. OK. I exit the launcher completely, close the open apps, and run the update. I reboot after the update finishes, fire up the launcher, and walk away to get water. When I return… BAM! The same D4 buy now pop-up advert. This is annoying. I click to dismiss the ad.
- I notice there is a video driver update notification. OK. I exit the launcher completely and start the driver download/install. I reboot after the installer completes. Once back at the desktop, I fire up the launcher. Hello… the same damn D4 buy now advert pop-up again! Nah… They need to stop this crap immediately! I don’t do pop-ups on my devices. Those days ended back in the late 1990s. I always surf with ad-block. I temp. disable the ad-block if there is an urgent need.
The spamming of pop-ups has stopped since I made a post in D3 General. The spamming of pop-up ads could have been a mistake or it could have been purposeful. Again, I’m not buying D4 or WoW or MW, so there is no need to spam adverts for these products at me.