10 Ridiculous Ways Adverts Were Built Into Video Games

10. The Nissan Charging Station In SimCity

The launch of 2013's SimCity was a full-on disaster, with widespread reports of network outages, crashes, and losses of save data dominating the game's coverage. But the bad press didn't stop there, as the online city-builder soon came under fire for its inclusion of a Nissan-branded car charging station.

Nothing more than a transparent attempt to make an easy bit of cash, the overpowered item was given to players for free, to place down in their cities. The station didn't produce waste of any kind, provided a happiness boost to nearby businesses, and, most bafflingly of all, didn't even require power to function.

That's right! A charging station for electric cars... that doesn't need electricity to run.

An item like this one - with no negative consequences for using it - directly contradicted the whole risk/reward planning aspect of city builders, and even worse, it stood out like a sore thumb, since nothing else in the game was branded as blatantly as this. It seemed like the objective with this station was to make it as flawless as it could possibly be in an effort to stop people complaining about the advertising itself, but with a giant Nissan logo emblazoned right across it, it was quite hard to not notice.