2K Games has issued a statement regarding the unskippable ads controversy in NBA 2K21. The publisher took to Twitter to acknowledge the issue and suggests the ad's placement was a mistake. https://twitter.com/NBA2K/status/1318618431848026112 If you missed it, 2K Games came under fire for adding in unskippable ads to NBA 2K21, a full-priced $60 game, a month after it had launched. The statement from 2K acknowledges the placement of these ads impacted the player experience. The publisher goes on to say that "these ads are not meant to run as part of the pre-game introduction," and this issue will be fixed in future episodes, which, reading between the lines here, suggests that 2K doesn't have an issue with the ads themselves, only with where the ads are displayed. The statement makes no mention of the ads being removed. Last month, EA faced a similar backlash when trailers for the Amazon TV show The Boys were shown before and at the end of in-match replays in UFC 4. EA quickly responded to the issue and pulled the ads from the game. Unfortunately, that doesn't look to be the case with 2K and NBA 2K21. Unskippable ads were also present in last year's game, NBA 2K20. NBA 2K21 is currently available on Xbox One. The next-gen version of the game will launch alongside the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on November 10th.