The first video game developer that signed up to participate in Facebook’s Oculus-based VR ad testing program is now pulling out of the deal. Blaston, a futuristic shooting title by Resolution Games, announced it pulled out of VR ad testing just days after the project was unveiled by the social media giant.
Blaston said it received backlash from players once Facebook began testing the program. According to Yahoo! Finance, “multiple users posted one-star reviews of Blaston in protest against the proposed test with Facebook…”
“After listening to player feedback, we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test,” Resolution Games said in a statement on Twitter. “Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test.”
Resolution Games later revealed in a social media post that it was exploring ways to move the testing to another title. It would reportedly be tested on the company’s free fish-catching game Bait.
The Profit‘s Take:
It’s clear Mark Zuckerberg sees VR and the metaverse as the future of his platform. The question is how patient will he be with seeing his vision through to the end. Premature efforts to monetize like this might scare users away. Short-term, the smartest thing for Facebook to do would be to offer two VR products: one that is cheaper with ads and one that is more expensive without ads.
(All information was provided by BBC News and Yahoo! Finance [1,2])
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