Facebook’s entry into VR advertising isn’t going too well

Facebook’s efforts to bring advertising to the Oculus virtual reality platform it has spent billions of dollars building out doesn’t seem to be off to a great start.

The company announced last week that they were planning to roll out their first in-game ads inside the title “Blaston” from the prolific VR game developer Resolution Games, and just days later the game studio has shared that after hearing an earful from users they’ve decided to abandon the ad rollout.

“After listening to player feedback, we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test,” a tweet from the Blaston account read. “Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test. We look forward to seeing you in the arena and hope you try the Crackdown Update that went live today!”

This potential ad rollout had been particularly noteworthy because the ads were being tested inside a title from a third-party developer. Facebook has purchased a handful of VR studios in recent months and owns a number of the most popular Quest titles inside its marketplace, so the opportunity to roll out advertising with a third-party partner gave Facebook a chance to frame the advertising rollout as a way for other developers to open up their monetization channels, rather than for Facebook to do so.

The announcement last week still brought out plenty of critics in the VR community who weren’t thrilled about Facebook’s broader struggles with balancing advertising efforts with user privacy, but other users seemed to be more annoyed by the prospect of ads being rolled out inside a paid title they had already purchased. Blaston retails for $9.99 in the Oculus store.

Update: Resolution Games reached out to TechCrunch with a statement, floating the possibility of further ad tests down the road inside one of the developer’s free apps. “To make it clear, we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test. As an alternative, we are looking to see if it is feasible to move this small, temporary test to our free game, Bait! sometime in the future.”

Resolution Games abandoning the test before it even started is an early setback for Facebook’s VR advertising efforts that showcases just how skeptical the Oculus platform’s most vocal users still are of Facebook. In a blog post last week, Facebook sought to address early concerns with what user data would be used to serve up advertising in VR, specifically noting that conversations recorded by the headset’s microphone and images analyzed by the onboard tracking cameras would not be used.

Facebook saw considerable backlash last year from virtual reality fans when they shared that new headset owners would need a Facebook account in order to activate their devices. While criticism poured in following the announcement, the recently released $299 Quest 2 headset has already outsold all of Facebook’s previous VR devices combined, the company has said.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.