What I mean is that even if I take that at face value and accept that it's not an ad, and I can just about see from a certain level of corporate brainwashing how one could believe that, it's still completely unacceptable.
Conversely, on Doom Dark Ages they got rid of the traditional difficulty mode of “I’m too young to die” which had a picture of Doom Guy with a bib and a pacifier, I think there’s some new industry guidance that it’s a no no to poke fun at people picking easy difficulties, or even indicating what difficulty the game was “designed to be played on” which Japanese game devs happily ignore.
I know these aren’t actual equivalents since your money isn’t used on the line and it’s purely a game state, buts it’s still an interesting and noteworthy transition.
Ugh, this type of thing is the worst. "Click here to remain fat, drunk and stupid!"*
* Animal House, 1978
That's what I wanted to say! Thank you.
It's not like this is organic word of mouth we're dealing with here.
Otherwise, it would just be Github with displayed ads and that would hurt the brand, so everyone gets ads.