Free In-Game Ad For PC Games
Rayman, Tom Clancy’s game series’ and Far Cry have decided to band together with other various games and create ad-supported versions of three games, which will not cost the player a dime(that is until after they download it).
The free games trio is comprised of the IHV favourite and tropical shooter from Crytek, Far Cry; the modern day rendition of Jordan Mechner’s Apple II hit, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time; and finally the philosophically-engaged mini-games compilation, featuring scholarly allegories with rabbits, Rayman: Raving Rabbits. It’s unclear whether the ad-supported version of Far Cry is compatible with user modifications or not.
As with every too-good-to-be-true deal, there is a catch. The offer is only available for U.S. residents with a valid Ubi.com account, the games installers are only available at FilePlanet, a service known for its slow free servers which require intrusive and proprietary download manager software to be installed in order to download files. Finally, the in-game advertisement for these games are of the unsubtle kind. However, for this last contention point, one could argue that you are getting what you paid for.
The ads are akin to web ads and display at various places in-game, from menus to pop-ups during saves/checkpoints. According to the first users, the severity of the in-game ad population varies from one title to another, with Prince of Persia faring the best, Far Cry in the middle and Rayman being the worst offender with ads appearing every five minutes or so.
