Want to watch a video on YouTube for free? Technically you can do that, but the asterisk at the end of that statement is that to do so you’ll need to sit through an advert first. That’s all well and fine, but for those channels that pride themselves on not subjecting their subscribers to a mandatory pre-roll advert of inspid content like influencers reacting to sanitary pads? Things are about to change.

Earlier this week, NBA 2K21 players noticed that the latest game in 2K’s annual franchise had become a touch bit…annoying. Unskippable adverts for Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 VR headset had been placed into loading screens, and even if you were running the game on an SSD on PC, you had to watch the whole advert before you’d be allowed to start playing a game of five on five.

The latest iteration in the NBA 2K series also has another touch of authenticity this year: Adverts that you can’t skip.

Yesterday, Twitter boss Jack Dorsey announced that the platform would be banning all political advertising on Twitter from November. It’s an interesting, curious but mostly welcome move in age where misinformation on social media is used to sway voters.

YouTube is dropping unskippable ads. YouTube said it was doing it to support "formats that work well for both users and advertisers".

Valve could be making even more cash off of Steam, if they chose to throw some adverts into it. But let’s be honest here: Selling ad-space wouldn’t benefit users in the long-run. And Valve is well aware of that, hence the lack of ostentatious digital commercials for sugary piss-chalk water or powdery crisps on their platform.

Super Smash Bros. will be hitting South Africa in October. This new series of adverts shows how people could use the game to help solve any every day disputes.

Remember when video game adverts used to be cool. We do, and we're complaining about it today with this particular feature.