Usually, in-game advertising is one of the most reviled things a developer can add to a game. For most, it screams of blatant, misguided marketing practices that pull players out of the fictional world the game is trying to create. While it's not a particularly prevalent issue at the moment, it's a trend that is starting to slowly catch on.
As such, in-game advertising is the last thing that anyone would ever expect modders to create: after all, most modders spend their time turning machine guns into nuclear missiles or replacing dragons with 'Macho Man' Randy Savage. Why bother spending all that time and effort just to place a bag of Skittles inside a virtual vending machine?
Regardless of the modder's motivation, it's actually happened. The Half-Life mod Black Mesa recently went live on the Steam Workshop, meaning that mods were all but inevitable....and now, players can download one of the weirdest mods ever: the 'Product Placement Skinpack.'
Mshee32, the modder behind the Product Placement Skinpack, described it as such:
"A Mod for Black Mesa that gives it a real 'Hollywood movie' feel by adding tons of real-life products that you can see!"
It might be a joke for now, but you never know - something like this could become the norm someday. There are already of number of different games with in-game advertising, so who's to say that publishers aren't above recreating a food court inside of the next big shooter?
Thankfully, that's not the case quite yet - but, if you want to find out what it's like to have in-game advertising plastered across an entire game, you can find the Product Placement Skinpack over at Mshee32's Steam Workshop page.
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