An Assassin’s Creed Odyssey player has taken to social media to voice his frustration over the intrusive in-game advertising for Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

Ubisoft has started pushing some pretty aggressive advertising for Assassin’s Creed Mirage in at least one of its older franchise entries. A video that has just surfaced shows the Odyssey as such a promotion emerges. Especially when the player tries to open their map.

Since Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was last updated at the end of 2021, it appears that the ad was not baked into the game and, therefore, could have been avoided.

In-game advertising has been prevalent in the gaming space for a long time. But most publishers are still content to limit ads to free-to-play games. Ubisoft is somewhat out of line in this regard. At least when it comes to promoting your own products. Indeed, in-game ads have appeared in all mainline Assassin’s Creed games since Origins.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage Black Friday ad in Odyssey?!

This aggressive marketing strategy continues to this day. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey footage shared by Reddit user triddell24 proves it. The 10-second clip shows the player trying to open the in-game map. But all you see is a full-screen ad advertising a 20% discount on Mirage. This was launched as part of Ubisoft’s 2023 Black Friday video game deals. The recording itself was posted on the r/XboxOne subreddit, so it appears that the author is an Xbox Series X user.

Reddit user CryostaticLT reported that he encountered the same ad while playing the PS5 version of Odyssey on November 22nd.

Could offline play be the solution…?

Ubisoft has historically operated mainly with platform-agnostic in-game promos. This history is consistent with these newly surfaced player claims from both PlayStation and Xbox users. However, since the Odyssey hasn’t received an update in two years, it makes sense that this particular ad is referring to an internet connection. As such, it should be avoidable by playing the game offline.

Although the three RPG instalments of the Assassin’s Creed franchise have consistently featured in-game advertisements for other parts of the series and DLC, this particular Mirage promo has still not been seen outside of Odyssey.

As for the newly spotted Odyssey ad, dozens of fans on Reddit reacted to the sighting. It has been labeled as everything from intrusive advertising to the reason for the game’s permanent removal. Mirage’s Ubisoft Store page reveals that the Black Friday sale ends on November 29th, so the controversial Assassin’s Creed ad will presumably be removed from Odyssey by then.

Source: Reddit

Just got an in-game advertisement when I tried to go to the map
byu/triddell24 inxboxone