Following on from when I reported on EA’s in-game advertising deal, I have just read on Slashdot that EA will bundle mandatory spyware into their upcoming game, Battlefield 2142.

According to the article, the spyware installed by the game will monitor browsing habits and other online activities and the data will be used to target advertisements that will appear in-game (presumably delivered courtesy of EA’s deal).
Now I’m not a big gamer by any standards - I suppose you could call me a ‘very casual’ gamer. But I definitely would not buy a game with this; it takes in-game advertising far too far in my opinion. From Kotaku, who originally covered the story:

When you open the box, a big slip of paper falls out first, preceeding any discs or manuals. The slip of paper says, essentially, that 2142 includes monitoring software which runs while your computer is online, and records “anonymous” information like your IP address, surfing habits (probably via cookie scans), and other “computing habits” in order to report this information back to ad companies and ad servers, which generates in-game ads.

I think this is a very dangerous move and could potentially put people off gaming on their computers entirely and make them consider consoles instead (where they obviously don’t have as much personal data stored).

From what I understand, the Battlefield series has a fairly substantial community around it, and it certainly will be telling to see what the gamers who might actually play the game think of this move by EA.