10 More Embarrassing Product Placements In Video Games
5. IKEA - The Sims 2
The Sims games are no strangers to a bit of in-game advertising, but the IKEA Home and H&M Fashion Stuff DLCs for The Sims 2 really feel like they're pushing it (even by EA’s standards.) As the IKEA and H&M branding would suggest, these are just advertisements that you can pay to put in your game.
For the low cost of roughly £10 per DLC, you too can be the proud (digital) owner of branded clothes and furniture from multimillion dollar companies! Jokes aside, why was this content not released for free? Assumedly EA got paid to advertise these other companies at players anyway, so it's a bit odd they chose to charge them all for the pleasure.
Thankfully, the reaction to these DLCs were unfavourable to say the least. EA were dragged by several different outlets and reviewers, including one now infamous review from PCZone who gave the H&M pack a 5/100.
Supposedly, although unconfirmed, EA were so furious with the review that they contacted PCZone directly about it. This resulted in PCZone publishing a follow-up to the IKEA Home DLC where Steve Hogarty simply listed IKEA furniture items ad nauseum in his 25/100 rating review.