Splash Damage, developer of the PC version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, has revealed plans to include in-game advertising in the title, explaining that it will help with post-release support.

Neil Postlethwaite, Splash Damage MD, has said, "For the last four years, we've put all of our effort into making Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. So, we're not planning to ship this game and walk away. We want to keep supporting ETQW in as many ways as possible. We'll be maintaining the persistent stats servers and the community site, and continuing to support ETQW with updates and improvements."

In an announcement appearing on the official Quake Wars community website, he continued, "To help cover this level of on-going support without passing the costs on to the gamer, ETQW will feature appropriate advertisements in select locations of our levels. The ads aren't intrusive and you won't have to interact with them; they'll just be part of the normal environment.

"In fact, there are some places it's quite odd not to have an advertisement - the sides of container trucks, for example. Great care is being taken to ensure that all our ads are appropriate for the game world and we have absolute approval rights in this area. If it's not appropriate or it's distracting, it won't go in."

Postlethwaite goes on to explain that choosing to put ads in the game was a decision that wasn't made lightly. "However, in doing so we hope to be able to provide a higher level of on-going support to the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars community than would have been possible otherwise."

June 20, 2007