A recent controversy involving NBA 2K21 frustrated a lot of fans, who were faced with unskippable advertisements in-game despite having to pay $70 for an NBA game thanks to the next-gen price hike. The official Twitter for the NBA 2K games issued an official statement addressing the community backlash today.
NBA 2K21 has been seeing a lot of criticism since it released last month, and one of the most common issues people have with the game is that it's not innovative enough for their tastes despite being $10 more than 2K20. The latest frustration for players came when users online began pointing out that an unannounced update was introducing unskippable ads into the game.
The official Twitter made a statement on NBA 2K21's unskippable ads, where it acknowledged that the last few games in the series have seen ads making their way into the in-game 2KTV feature. Fans haven't been happy about these types of ads for years, but what really tipped the scales in favor of mass frustration was that players were confused as to why they were paying more but still getting these ads.
The tweet says the ads aren't supposed to run in pre-game introductions, which is where many Reddit and Twitter users were noticing the placement. According to the tweet, this feature is going to be fixed in "future episodes," and the announcement ended with a thanks to the community for its feedback on the game. Of course, feedback to NBA 2K21 has been largely negative, but the unskippable ads let to an extremely adverse reaction as many fans refused to just grin and bear what they saw as an unnecessary and unjust addition to the game.
However, as some comments pointed out, it's still unclear exactly when the ads were added, although it seems to be recently, and the apology is only coming now after a massive fan backlash to NBA 2K21's ads. Some users expressed sentiments that they didn't care about 2K's apology, and that it looks like the company is only publicly apologizing because of the angry comments online, and that the ads might have stayed where they are if people hadn't complained so much.
This won't be the first NBA 2K21 update driven by community feedback, since many users were so frustrated by the game's shooting mechanics at launch that a hotfix came out just a day after release. Although fans can't always get everything they want just by providing feedback, it's good that at least some issues can be fixed if the community is loud enough.
NBA 2K21 is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions in development.