When it comes to basketball games, there’s really one place to go in town: the NBA 2K series from 2K Sports. While EA has tried to muscle in with their on-again, off-again NBA Live franchise, by and large 2K has overwhelmed the market share. Overall, the series is still pretty solid, as you can see from our review of current gen version of NBA 2K21, the latest entry in the series. But a lot of criticism has been thrown towards the franchise for its aggressive monetization, and well, it’s that time again.
As reported first by Stevivor, it seems unskippable ads are now in the game. They tested the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions to find they were running there (no word on the Switch and Stadia versions, but odds are they are there as well or will be added). The ads don’t run as long as most loading screens, but apparently some do and even on a PC running a SSD the ads still have to finish even they exceed loading screens before you can continue. It’s unclear if the ads will be part of the next generation versions, which have been marketed heavily for their lack of loading.
Fans of the series will be familiar with this, as this also happened with last year’s title, NBA 2K20. Looks like it wasn’t a one-off and appears to now be a standard addition to the franchise moving forward. NBA 2K21 is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC and Stadia with PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S version coming for next gen launch.