Shroud of the Avatar ads without Early Access mark?

I may be just noticing them now, but here's a screenshot from Skype:



Takes me straight to the Bundle Store page when clicked.

When I went to gdURL to save a link to this image, I saw another ad.

The good news is, I'm seeing these. On the other hand... shouldn't these say "Get Early Access" or something similar instead? Just an observation.

 

Yeah saw the same ads on gamespot and yahoo.

 

Not only that, but I thought they weren't going to spend any money on marketing (e.g. ads) until final launch?

 

I saw this one and another one on MSN.com on Thursday.

 

Good catch!

 

maybe the one doing the ads is the Bundle Store to drive sales to their store?

 

I also saw some ads earlier this week on Kongregate.

 

Wtf?
They like just made it clear how they wernt going to advertise till game is more done.
Have you not looked at all the critical feedback? Theres entirely too many little things and big things you need to be focused on, not trying to attract new players!
Look at your steam reviews. You took a massive hit due to piss poor timing from a MASSSIVE bug issue and throwing game on sale. And now im reading you guys got caught having staff members beef up reviews. Wth Devs.

Stupid decision. Stupid oversight by not even having the early access tag.

Man im invested in this game with time and money and friends. Stop overlooking critical issues and making stupid PR decisions. You know what will bring people into the game? The people here having reason to reccomend it.
Theres like EASILY 20 things off top of my head that should be prioritized more then any form of adds.
Fkn redicoulous.

 

Are you guys sure it's Portalarium that's doing the advertising? Anyone can create little banner campaigns... I know when Star Citizen launched their recruitment program, I ran a Google campaign to rack up recruit numbers... and if it is Port, little banner ads could be nothing more than an info gathering campaign in preparation for something bigger. Now, if people start seeing full page magazine ads or commercials on Twitch... banner/text ads for anything is sometimes just a really good way to discover demographics and capture analytical data.

 

God i hope so. Or they are contradicting their own game plan.
And for the steam thing, theres simply no excuse.

 

It's prob just the algorithms tracking/watching you...the Oracle can traverse worlds just as we can.

 

Why don't you let them handle their business and not worry about it.

 

They told us not to get new people into the game until there was a more polished version.. Why waste money on advertising?

 

Probably got extra free Google ads credits over the holidays that will expire soon?

 

Could be steam advertising because steam gets a percentage of sales. Might be part of the steam contract to allow steam to advertise your product.

 

MrBlight's clearly worried about it because all the things he's mentioning are clear and present issues that will affect the long term viability of the game. Do you want the game to continue in the future, or not?

 

I think fears about whether the game will succeed or not are greatly misplaced.

 

I think the fears are very valid.

 

It's great (on some levels) to have blind faith like that but, as I said elsewhere recently, the next 12 months will really decide. If there's more botched patches and a sense the game's going nowhere, there'll be next to no one left playing.

 

I bet these are retargeting ads, which only show to people who have been to the SOTA website. Retargeting ads can be very low cost and effective way for Port to drive revenue.