Game publishers and developers should check out this post by Neil Postlethwaite, Splash Damage’s former Managing Director. I wanted to highlight this post even though it is over a year old, because Neil communicated to the fan base of Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars in a very upfront manner that in order to support the game upon release that Splash Damage would be integrating in-game ads into the game.

To quote Neil:

Choosing to place ads in Enemy Territory was not a decision we 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.

This is the kind of transparency that publishers need to have with their customers (the gaming masses). It helps to reassure the gamers who might otherwise take offense to ads in-games, and does a better job of presenting the reasoning behind in-game advertising usage.