“One game on the Web has been accused of being little more than an elaborate scam designed to bilk gamers out of their money. The game, Evony, has an extensive Web presence that has gained a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons, and that’s just the beginning of the bad press surrounding the title. Accusations of shady business practices, legal bullying, and physical intimidation surround the game; some of these claims are easy enough to parse, while others are practically impossible to figure out because the real story has become so convoluted that it’s a Gordian Knot of facts.”
never heard of it. i haven’t even seen the ads (i do turn adblock once in a while).
is it that famous game?
No idea, I haven’t heard of it ever before either. And seems like it’s not even worth hearing. Is this just some elaborate ad for it?
I never had luck to be exposed to any of this naked ads. Though, I’m constantly attacked by retarded ads for something called “imvu”. Those ads are antithesis of marketing – they do not invite to click on them, jsut the opposite.
Very famous, the ads were all over the internet a year or two ago (they still popup now and then, but its not like it used to be) The article is breaking the story rather late, this isn’t news anymore.
The ads are quite ubiquitous – I use Opera so I do see them on all sorts of websites.
Saw the ads, logged in, looked around. Seemed like a flash-based Travian knock-off, and I have had quite enough of time-sinks like that. That was about a week or so before the Civony->Evony name change, so it was a while ago.
Even when they’re not scams these games are largely a waste of time money.
As a WoW player, I seen those ads quite frequently in gaming related sites before the most famous ones removed them (smaller ones are still full of them).
I put it into my “avoid at all costs” list since first time I seen those ads; why should a fantasy game use naked, obviously unrelated girls as promoters?
naked? I’ve seen the ads and they were far from naked. Unless cleavage counts as nudity these days.
Well, don’t you know, in the deep Christian South of the USA, it’s considered ‘implied’ nudity, so it must be nudity!
Ridiculous, but meh, to each their own…
Ars is located in the bible belt?
I realize it’s far from unusual for designers to “copycat” games; this has gone on since the days of video arcade games (bootlegs and hacks), and it’s very obvious today in the so-called “casual” and Web-based (especially on Facebook) gaming sector. They have to practice somewhere, and things stay original only so long before it’s variations on a theme, even if they don’t variate much.
But this just seems to be absolute bottom-feeding. I’d seen the ads; I suspected there was no sexual content to the game. But I was unaware of the other things the Ars Technica article mentioned. Tracking software in gaming isn’t new (remember WildTangent?), and most of the other allegations have been around the selling/marketing world for years (such as pyramid schemes) but that one company seems to be doing all of the above… yeah, seems like a new low to me.
Also didn’t know about PopCap satirizing the ads for Plants vs. Zombies– which is actually a good game, even original. Thumbs up to PopCap.
[q]Also didn’t know about PopCap satirizing the ads for Plants vs. Zombies– which is actually a good game, even original. Thumbs up to PopCap.[/p]
PvZ is incredable (bought it for pc, then bought it again for iPhone), and those ads actually made me laugh first time i saw them.