Now that you say it, I notice this as well.

It is bullshit. It says they are linked to funhouse but that is total bullshit as 1 clearly says for jjp games and one is for the lower playfield on munsters.

Wish I could block ads from certain company's. Pinstadium would be the first I'd block. What a huge waste of money

If you go to their marketplace on this site they have a whole bunch of games with all 8 of their products linked as "Game specific" even thought most wont even work on that pins.

It is abuse of the system and marketplace and I hope robin will do something about it.

Same thing happens if you search for quicksilver. We all know lower playfield lighting is game specific to quicksilver.

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Here is more abuse of the market.

Their product for pinball machines made by spooky is linked to 136 games.

I didnt know spooky made that many games.

Their advertising tactics are complete bullshit and I really hope something is done about it.
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Shady practices indeed.

Been WAY overdue, and grateful this is being brought up. When a "standard" was attempted for tourney games to have these, they (product) became dead to me.

Truly hoping the rose-colored glasses (or in this case, rainbow ramp puke) Kool-Aid is starting to water down, hence the ad bombing.

Choice is one thing, stuffing it down our throats another.

Surely, the coffers are full (though obviously grinning all the way to the bank), and as Op states...enough!!!!

What the heck is a "pinstadium"??!? I've owned MANY pinball machines, and have never needed one of these...

Yup this is optic vomit all over my screen . I notice it every time so much so I don't want to look at my personal market pages anymore.

Agreed, it's annoying.

Enough to make you not want to buy the stuff.

Agreed.

It's beyond the linked games in the listings.
It's pretty much every machine I've seen on the website.
If you search any random machine these adverts come up and that machine may or may not even be in the relevant game listing.
Also, click on any EM pin and their advertisement is guaranteed to be on the relevant market place items adverts.
Go to any EM pin on the top 100 list and check it out.
I'm sure they sell a lot of these to EM collectors.

Heres a good one for you.
https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/total-recall
The Total Recall prototype (1 made) and guess what the relevant market place items are.
What the hell and why?

It's effectively spam and really cheapens the site.

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Perhaps if there were some sort of product to put additional light on it................................................

They also ran an “event” ad for TPF this year. It was just an advertisement. I created the official TPF event on the event page and I asked the moderators to take down the pinstadium “event” but they wouldn’t.

Discussion about their product was banned from one of the Facebook Pinball Enthusiasts pages because friends of the companies owners kept hyping their products. We know that they were friends of the owner because people that know both parties told everyone that.

This is the real problem I think and feel the same way.
I want to search for items for specific machines and then when I search another game I have to weed though it all over again.
It's too much and makes you not want to visit the marketplace for parts or mods.

They've linked them to homebrew games also.

If you are using Firefox or Chrome you can permanently block it from being visible using the AdBlockPlus addon.

Install ABP and select block element from the options.

Rollover the section of the website you no longer wish to see so that it is yellow highlighted and right click mouse button.

Click Add in the pop up text box.

Done.

Absolutely agree. I also remember them flooding the star wars owners club with a bunch of postings promoting their product. I'm sure it's not the only the club they've done this in.

Rules for commercial sellers should include
- to not post in owners clubs
- one ad per product
- generic mods not to be linked to specific games

@robin: what is your take on this?

I’m sure they’ll just say it’s capitalism at its finest, just making use of free advertising.

Here’s my rule.

I will never buy something that feel has been advertised too me. I feel that I’m an informed consumer who know the products and services that will work for me. If I need a new product I will research possible solutions, not just accept the advertised solution.

I doubt I’ll ever find the need for these.

They sponsor everything so good luck. As long as he gives to podcast and shows they will let him do whatever I'm sure. I cant believe people buy that stuff. I fell for it when he first started selling and it was a waste of money.

Obviously their ads work. @wackybrakke, It got you talking about them and even got you to create an entire thread to talk about them. Genius marketing. When you talk about them, whether it’s positive or negative- they are getting you thinking about the product. Unfortunately it’s overboard, They definitely should tone down the ads

Edit: not sure why everyone is downvoting me. I have stated I don’t approve of his over marketing. I said he was taking advantage of the system

[Start angry old guy rant] I watched the PAPA Replay FX Youtube broadcasts over the weekend and had to look at the shitty dotted lights and rainbow stripe effects along the sides of the playfields from the Pinstadiums that PAPA now puts on their games. It f*cking sucked. [End angry old guy rant]

The thing that always bothered me about pinstadium, a certain company I wont name, but likes to refine pinballs, made a cheaper version of side lights. Two styles, one was 60 and the other was 70. Took them down after about a week. Pinstadium loyalists were screaming on the forums how it was a rip off and that's bad business. I guess forcing any competition out and spamming every game with ads is good business.

Yes, this is actually what turned me against them.

PM'd Robin about this 1.5 months ago. When viewing the Fireball II Club Members Only thread, out of 24 positions all but 2x of them were Pin Stadium products for mostly newer games -- nothing related at all to Classic Bally/Stern or Fireball II. I was browsing other topics and noticed the same.

Suggested this could at least be helped if a max of 4-6x results per shop were pulled back. That's reasonable I think. A fix like that should only take seconds to implement and clean this up quick. Never heard back.

Am I reading this correctly that the product is being advertised for supporting games it does not actually support? That’s bad mojo

Right. When you create a product in a shop, you can link which games it works with & theoretically this allows relevant ads to be returned. Unfortunately right now someone can just link every game ever made to each product & have their ad show up all over the place. Without any kind of hard limit for # of results pulled back for a shop, this floods the system with non-relevant ads.

IMO a complete takeover by one shop shouldn't be allowed. There's no reason implementing measures to prevent gaming of the system should offend anyone that knows they were gaming the system

I’ve seen it, but would never use it on any of my games.

Yeah, they looked awful. Shocks me so many people like this over priced product.

Metallica and Willy Wonka looked horrible with all the twinkling lights and zebra stripes.

It amazes me that people spend the money they spend on these kits. I think they make every game look like trash and I wouldn't buy them at any price point to be quite honest. Now we get to look at washed out lighting, metal ramp zebra stripes and candy cane wireforms at PAPA events too. What a turn off. Seems like Scott at Pinstadium owns this site now, not Robin. I'd be shocked if anything is done about it.

I have my own.....I turn on the lights in the room, and dim to taste.

I've sent a PM to robin last night.

For now I will not be donating anything to this site again until this is taken care of.

If robin needs money for the site he can get it from pinstadium now not from me as this advertising is more spam then anything.

I HIGHLY SUGGEST EVERYONE DO THE SAME, THERE IS STENGTH IN NUMBERS.

It's called deep pockets guys.

It's called selling 2 strips of LEDs for hundreds of dollars. Leaves a lot of money for lobbying/advertising.

Nobody needs them. I used to call them out for their constant SPAM and their shills posting FAKE and STAGED before & after pics in every other thread, but it never seemed to help. The way they are spamming the Marketplace now is rediculous. Seems like they get miles of leeway around here. Sponsoring this site should not give them a free pass to run wild. Frankly, it really harms the integrity of this site. And didn't that show they sponsor name them product of the year? Am I the only one who notices this shameless crap? Not sure what's worse. Them or the sell outs.

Annoying spam and shady marketing is not "genius". It's just a reminder of how annoying they are.

Lol, and you searched Funhouse. If you also search Fun House (1956), you still get 2 Pinstadium ads at the bottom

LOL

I never said it was a good thing. Obviously they found a way to exploit pinside marketplace. It definitely is too much advertisement for a product that’s very polarizing.

Perhaps we should start a thread to specifically get everyone to boycott their product.

In late June I was streaming BKSR with the room lights off using only stock lighting. There was another pinstadium sponsored stream at the same time streaming the same game with the pinstadium logo and frequent reminders of how necessary the product was. A friend of mine sent me screen shots from both streams. I found this a more realistic comparison of with and without than is usually posted.

Both (resized).jpg

I don’t see the ads , my retinas were destroyed by a game with Pinstadium lights on it .

What’s more polarizing here on pinside?

Kaneda or pinstadium?

I would have thought the insane price was a deterrent from buying it. You're more than 1/2 way to a color DMD at the prices. Also there are great threads for DIY version and a $26 price and literally a few hours of time its a no-brainer for the more "DIY inclined" crowd.

Or just add couple spotlights, or some brighter GI bulbs. My gameroom has dark walls, a black ceiling, and I often play with lights off. Somehow I can see my pins just fine. I can even see my EM with incandescent bulbs. Pinstadium would have you believe pins were unplayable for the last 70 years before they came along. It's the biggest crock of shit on Pinside.

And that’s saying something

I find that any newer pins are already too bright for me. I like how Stern lets you turn down the brightness in the settings, I'm assuming they do that on all their new games now? I remember turning down the brightness on my WOZ when I owned it. I can't imagine adding even more lighting to these games.

I agree, I actually just have a "rail lighting system" that is just UV light that goes on and off with the red GI in a party zone and also because the play-field inks are fluorescent. I took off my warm white rail lights on demo man because I didn't really need it.