REYKJAVIK — Fenris Creations has announced the removal of 50 billboard advertisements from rotation across New Eden, replacing them with three new “evergreen, new-player-focused” billboards in preparation for a “new billboard cycle” set to begin sometime in early July.
The announcement, buried in the June 12 patch notes for version 24.01, was interpreted by players as a rare admission that the game’s advertising strategy had been, in the words of one forum poster, “aggressively mid.”
“I’ve been playing for six years and I still don’t know what any of those billboards were advertising,” said capsuleer Derek Hsu, a member of Pandemic Horde who admitted he had trained himself to mentally filter out all in-game advertisements the way his brain handles highway billboards in real life. “Turns out Fenris also didn’t know what they were advertising. Solidarity, I guess.”
The three replacement billboards are described in patch notes as “new-player-focused” and “evergreen,” a term that, upon inspection, appears to mean “less obviously broken than the previous batch.” Sources confirmed that at least two of the new billboards feature the words “THIS IS YOUR CHOICE” and “CAPSULEER DAY 2026,” both widely regarded as significant upgrades over the previous cycle, which players say reminded them of “a Geico ad made by someone who had never played a video game.”
Fenris Creations declined to specify what happened to the 50 removed billboards, though insiders suggest they were “decommissioned” in a manner similar to how nullsec handles structure timers — quietly, without fanfare, and with no opportunity for player engagement.
Community reaction was mixed. “This is the most meaningful quality-of-life improvement in the 24.01 patch,” wrote one poster on the official forums, prompting several replies pointing out that the bar for meaningful quality-of-life improvements had been set extremely low by the previous patch, which fixed an issue where NPCs would inexplicably adopt “a life of pacifism” once players drifted more than 100km from a Supply Depot.
Those NPCs, sources confirm, “have once again discovered their bloodlust, regardless of range.”
Fenris Community Manager Oskar Rennes issued a statement describing the billboard refresh as “a fresh canvas for storytelling” and encouraged players to “enjoy the new evergreen experience.” When reached for clarification on what stories the billboards were meant to tell, Rennes clarified that he had been told to write that line fifteen minutes before the patch notes went live and had not been briefed further.
The new billboard cycle is expected to launch in early July, by which point players estimate they will have once again trained themselves to ignore them entirely.
