PlayStation Users Divided Over "Disgusting" Ad In Latest Free Game

There was some hope among fans that 2022 would mark a fresh start for PlayStation Plus, following a decidedly rough second half of 2021. That hope appears to have been shot down with the arrival of February's free games.

PlayStation Plus users have, over the last few months, made their feelings on the monthly free games very clear. They hit out at the "insulting" Mortal Kombat X back in September, and described the arrival of a demo version of Godfall in December as a "new low".

Last month fans hailed January's lineup as the best month in a long time, sparking cautious optimism that 2022 would see a course correction for PS Plus.

Unfortunately, one of February's free games has once again caused fans to call out the online service for failing to deliver.

This month's freebies are EA Sports UFC 4, Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-shot Adventure, and Planet Coaster: Console Edition. On the face of it, that's not a bad lineup... until you consider that Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep is actually just a DLC expansion for Borderlands 2. Yikes.

As soon as the game was announced for PS Plus, critics suggested that it had only been added as a way to advertise the upcoming spinoff game Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Sure enough, the first thing players see when loading up the PS Plus version of Assault On Dragon Keep is... an advert for Wonderlands. Naturally, this has not gone down well.

"The fact that this kind of aggressive monetization being the norm in the video game industry now is mind-blowing," wrote one user.

"I see a lot of people wishing for these [PlayStation Plus] games to serve as ads, like wanting Dying Light because Dying Light 2 is coming up," added another. "I think it's great to use these as ads, the issue is which games they actually use and how blatantly they push the sale. This seems to be an example of failing on both of those points."

"Did not realize it was DLC lmao," replied a third. "What a slap in the face."

A few subscribers were less fussed, with one writing: "I don't mind a advert for a future game in the series of games I am already playing getting patched in. I am playing that game after all, so I'm the target audience." Others argued that it would be better to have something "a little less intrusive", while most seem to agree that the combination of the advert and the PS Plus game being a DLC is what really stings.