An interesting write-up from a Swat 4 fan reveals more than you might like to know about the online shooter. The recent patch for Swat 4 introduced 'Massive Streaming Ad Support'.One gamer speaks of 'suspicious' packets being sent to online ad servers. By using a packet-monitoring tool, they were able to trace the destinations of the packets and even some content.
While playing the latest version of SWAT4 with a friend, we noticed something was rather different. The particular level we were playing was modelled on a random gas station and convieince store.
In the game, the player can enter the store, and is immersed in a realistic environment, including goods for sale on the shelves, and posters advertising fake products on the walls. Until we updated the game to the latest 1.1 patch release.
With the new patch in place, we played the level again. This time, we noticed the posters were actually advertising real products. One told me of a new show on a sci-fi channel, and the other about a new brand of soft drink. We noticed these posters throughout the level. Then I remembered in the patch readme file, the one line that read:
* Added Massive Streaming Ad Support
With this information, we could only wonder what 'massive ad streaming support' was. Obviously it was adding adverts to the game we had already paid $50 for, but we wanted to know how, and what information was it sending to the servers? With these questions in mind, we loaded up our favourite packet dumper.
Online advertising for the gamer generation
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