Game data usage. Rovio pre downloads ads whether you watch it or not

There are two factors involved here:

1. Battle Bay is a real time multiplayer game. By nature it will consume more data than most other games because it needs to maintain constant connection with the server. We have highly optimized data transfer protocols in use but sending information about 10 ships 10 times per second just inherently comes with a cost.

2. Yes, Battle Bay does pre-download ads. This is the industry standard way and in fact we can't even affect it. Battle Bay is using third party ad libraries which are independently responsible for downloading, caching and viewing the ads. The way how ads work is that first an ad is downloaded. Then after it's complete the library signals the game that an ad is available and can be shown. In other words: Ads are downloaded, not streamed, and they could not be shown if they were not downloaded. If downloading would only start when you press the ad button then you might be stuck watching a loading screen for minutes on slower internet connections before the ad would be shown.

 

To a certain extent yes but not nearly as much as if you would be watching them. When you watch an ad it then starts downloading a new ad on the background while you are playing the next battle hoping it’s ready before it is needed. If you don’t watch ads then it doesn’t need to download new videos nearly that often. Only when ad-network specific expiration time is reached.

There is no streaming for VIP users. What we do is just disable the whole ads system, so it won’t work at all.

The quality of the videos depends on multiple factors, like the device you are using. Tablets and phones having 4K displays get pretty high quality material. But this is again something completely out of our control.

 

88 MB in 3 hours is in the range of normal data usage even completely without ads. You have to remember that you are playing a real-time multiplayer game with 10 people. That will consume data.

 

Since Battle Bay itself doesn't have an ad-blocker, the only option is to use one that operates at the network level. Most of those work by denying connections to the CDN (content delivery network) servers identified as being from ad providers - but the ad companies will frequently cycle CDN names and IP addresses to avoid blacklists. Eventually they'll find one that isn't blocked, and the ads will download to your phone/tablet in the background so they can be played when next needed.

If you had a hypothetical, perfect ad-blocker, and never connected to the Internet without it, you might be able to play BB without downloading an ad, and then when you hit "Watch Ad" after a battle ... well, who knows how the 3rd-party library would work? Maybe it errors out immediately and returns you to the previous screen, maybe it just crashes with a "404 File Not Found" and takes the game with it.

Personally, as a non-VIP, I'm going to hit "watch ad" and take that 20-30s between battles to stretch my legs and relax. Keeps me from getting mad or tilted if I go on a bad streak, plus I have a desk job so anything that gets me up and moving is a good thing.

In the last month (Nov 6th to present) I used 2.63GB playing Battle Bay.

 

Hypothetical question: would you continue playing if you had the ability to disable ads entirely, but you would also lose the option to gain 50% bonus?

Regarding the underlying behavior I'm not certain if Unity has modified the Ads SDK behavior for the isReady() function, but there's been a feature request open since I believe 2016 to enable the ability to check/cache ads only on WiFi or "unmetered" connections.

 

I'm Canadian, people in 3rd-world countries probably have better mobile data plans than I do.

Perhaps I can stand up a poll, collect some results, and bring it to the devs.