Micro-transactions have been a hot topic for 2K Games’s NBA 2K19 as the developer has actively pushed heavy micro-transactions in the NBA 2K series.

At one point, 2K Games even begged their customers to speak out against anti-loot box laws being pushed by the Belgium Gaming Commission.

But why worry about micro-transaction and loot boxes when you could just force every player to watch an unskippable in-game advertisement?

NBA 2K19 has always had some amount of in-game advertisements, which is already an issue in the first place, but players noticed a large spike in the amount of loading screen ads following a period where the game was on sale for only $3.

Reddit was quickly filled with posts condemning 2K Games for their extremely underhanded tactic.

“Sell the game at a $3 price point to get an influx of players so they can pull this. Such a predatory company, it’s disgusting”

Reddit user u/dramaticpotatoes

Many have noted that no matter how fast your load times are, whether you’re on a base PS4 or a PC with NVME storage, your game will display the advertisement for the same amount of time. Some users even feel as if the loading screens have been extended to show the ad for a longer period of time.

The in-game ads that display during loading times are unskippable, but can be disabled by turning off the 2KTV option in the main menu settings.

Regardless of whether or not they can be disabled, in-game advertisements such as this are an insult to the customer. Not a single user wants to watch an unskippable ad, and it’s disgusting to watch greedy companies in the gaming industry try to milk every coin and every second of time out of a player.