Facebook’s first partner for advertising in its virtual reality headset withdrew from the initiative less than a week after its announcement after a reaction from the gaming community.

The world’s largest social media platform said last Wednesday that it plans to start testing advertising in Oculus, its popular virtual reality gaming headset, with ads running in the shooter. blaston and “some other developers”.

But blaston, a Resolution Games title, abandoned the plan on Monday, following a deluge of user complaints. “After listening to player feedback, we realize that Blaston is not best suited for this type of advertising test. Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test ”, he said on twitter.

Dozens of users have posted one-star reviews on blaston to protest the proposed test with Facebook, arguing, for example, that paid games shouldn’t suddenly bombard users with ads, according to media reports.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on the decision. In the statement last week, he said helmet wearers would have controls to hide particular advertisements or hide advertisements from a particular advertiser.

blastonFacebook’s decision is embarrassing for Facebook as it tries to grow its virtual reality business by adding advertising dollars to its material revenue. Last month, the company said it started testing ads in the Oculus mobile app.

The company has invested heavily in both virtual reality, where headsets block out the real world, and augmented reality, where images are overlaid on the real world – taking Apple and Snap in an effort to build the platform. next-generation computing. The three companies are fighting to make augmented reality glasses.

At the VivaTech conference last week, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company now has 10,000 people working on both virtual and augmented reality. “We are investing billions and billions and billions of dollars to build something that we believe will have a fascinating future in five to ten years,” he said.

The idea of ​​introducing advertising into virtual reality has long been rejected by some gamers. After selling Oculus to Facebook in 2014 for around $ 2 billion, founder Palmer Luckey said the company would be able to continue to operate on its own from its new parent company, adding, “We’re not going follow you, flash ads on you, or do anything invasive.

Later Monday, blaston said in a tweet that as an alternative to its test, Resolution Games “is investigating whether it is possible to move this temporary little test” to its free fish-catching game Bait.