Electronic Arts built a new advertising platform. They called it EA Advertising. The company will now sell ad space directly inside your video games. Stadium signs. Custom content. Brands connecting with fans. That's the pitch.
You paid seventy dollars for the game. You paid another forty for the season pass. You paid fifteen more for the battle pass because your brain is broken and you cannot help yourself. Now you get to watch a Coca-Cola ad while your character bleeds out in a virtual parking lot.
This is the same company that pioneered loot boxes. The same one that turned every sports franchise into a slot machine with a referee. Now they want to pipe Mountain Dew directly into your eyeballs while you're trying to score a goal in FIFA. Sorry. EA Sports FC. They lost the FIFA license because even a corrupt international soccer cartel thought EA was too shameless.
The press release says brands can connect with fans through EA's portfolio of games. Connect is doing heavy lifting there. So is fans. You're not a fan. You're a captive audience with a credit card and poor impulse control.
EA's stock went up on the news. Investors love new revenue streams. Especially ones that cost nothing to implement and extract value from people who already paid full price. It's genius if you're a sociopath. It's also genius if you're a shareholder. Same thing.
Retail traders saw the bump and bought calls. They think EA is innovating. They think this is bullish for gaming. They're wrong but they'll figure that out after the options expire worthless. Then they'll post loss porn on Reddit and blame market manipulation.
EA spent decades perfecting the art of making you pay twice for the same thing. Now they're adding a third layer. You're not just buying the game and the DLC anymore. You're also renting out your attention span to whoever bids highest for it.
Photo by Sergei Novikov on Unsplash
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