Why isn't there more advertising or product placement in games?

[Zkuq]

BasilZero said:

Because contracts and obligations expire - when they do - if the game is digital it'll be removed for an example with what happened with GTA Vice City and San Andreas when they were temporarily removed from PSN/XBL/Steam until the music was patched out.

I think the same applies for games that have ads on real world stuff rather than fictional stuff.

In other words it causes legal issues and would be a huge PR headache.

This is probably not an actual issue. The ads would probably be fetched from servers anyway, and the server could decide what ads to provide. If no ads are found at all, the ad spots could just default to some imaginary ads. I think I've seen this approach somewhere like ten years ago already. This way, there's no need for patches when licensing deals expire.