Video games have a tendency to go into weird territory and most of the time, it has something to do with a real life company trying to shove their brand into the faces of gamers. Sports games have a habit of doing this, but they have a good excuse of doing so. Like reality, stadiums used for football, baseball, soccer, basketball, hockey, and wrestling are often plastered in advertisements. So, duplicating the real look and feel helps the game’s atmosphere by just a smidge.

Not only that, but there have been games that were created for the sole purpose of advertising a product. Burger King acted on this method back in 2008 when they made three Xbox 360 titles featuring the King and various other Burger King mascots. But before that, there have been games centered around Chex, Captain Crunch, Cheetos, Kool-Aid, 7-Up, and even Chuck E. Cheese’s.

The latest fad in advergaming seems to be slapping an ad on some of the game world’s scenery or featuring something a player can use that subliminally tries to sell a product. The famous Metal Gear Solid franchise has had numerous product placements in its games, ranging from Pepsi and Mountain Dew to Axe, Doritos, and shamelessly, Playboy. Creator Hideo Kojima has gone on record to say it helps keep the game “fresh.” Another developer, Eidos, has been lashed at by fans of Deus Ex: Human Revolution when gamers learned about a McDonald’s billboard being featured in the game and later discovered small ads on their loading screens for the Blu-ray collection for Star Wars.

I bring this issue up because a game many players were excited for was just tainted by one product placement that every player has to sit through. Earlier this week, the long-awaited video game based on the Mad Max franchise was finally released onto PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It wasn’t long until gamers received a free update that began to weasel in advertisements for RockStar Energy drinks in loading screens as well as provide a drivable dune buggy suffocated in RockStar’s logo.

Developers haven’t shied away from expressing why they resort to in-game advertising, but their excuse is rather weak. Often, you’ll hear an executive come out and say, “We have to make some sort of profit. Making this game was expensive!” Well, maybe that’s telling you something, you whiny brat. Maybe not every game you make needs to be a shooter or an open-world sandbox. Perhaps not hiring 50 texture artists is a better idea. Better yet, don’t spend millions of dollars on pre-rendered cutscenes for trailers and scripted tech demos.

What developers don’t seem to get is that when an ad is plastered somewhere in a game, it can easily drive players away from being immersed in an entirely different world. The occasional, small product placement may give off a chuckle, but when a game like Homefront tries to pass product placement as an excuse to make the game “look real” or “make profit because a game isn’t selling well,” it really angers the crowd, which means your game is going to be remembered as “that one thing with that one advertisement or twenty.”

Developers should have faith in their work and make sure the quality is good to where they’ll sell millions of copies. Instead of maintaining that, studios are more concerned about chatting up the game, getting some sort of hype up and then making sure the game gets released within a year. They think they’re keeping money safe, but, really, they’re just at a greater risk.

My advice? Take your time and don’t spend nine-figure budgets. How many artists and programmers do you really need for one character or animation? Why do 25 different people have to work on that one bush that’s going to be copied and pasted throughout the game?

“Speed” never means “quality.”