A lot of people seem to find it incredibly annoying and criticise movies and games for it a lot. I'm always a bit surprised by that, because I'm usually quite oblivious to product placement. I mean... these things just exist, so it's far less distracting for me to see someone in a movie drinking Guinness than "BEER". If I didn't read about it as supposedly an egregious example of product placement, I would never have even noticed that Alan Wake had product placement. I mean... name of a company appears on a billboard... so? Billboards exist, they advertise stuff, it's not like the Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones.

But mybe that's because I don't pay much attention to brands and logos and the like, or just because I'm not observant enough and miss stuff all the time. So, does it bother you guys? Do you notice it?

Nope.
But just like you: I don't pay attention to these things IRL - so why should I pay attention to them in-game?
Not to mention that, in case of (e.g.) racing games - the whole product placement, advertisement, etc. even makes sense and is a huge part of the real thing.

Replacing the brands can be a creative bonus.

Tarantino built a complete set of fake products that he uses in all his movies.

RockStar invented beer brands like "Pisswater" with many different logo variations and some advertisers.


But I don't really mind what they use, as long it's not ads for real stuff.

I only ever watched a little of Code Geass, and I know Pizza Hut sponsored the show, but the ad placement felt overwhelming to me there.

Also, I played Darkened Skye without realizing that was a Skittles-themed game, so when it got to the first scene where they start talking about Skittles I felt so weirded out that I dropped the game there and never picked it back up.

I think I mostly find it too noticeable or weird when it's just one brand being hammered in, or if the placement is too in-your-face.

Sigh
If it's not "for real stuff", it's not product placement.

I actually really want to play this, to the point where I may be inclined to get a physical copy since it's unlikely to come to GOG I guess. It just sounds fascinatingly bizarre to me, a fantasy game with Skittles powered magic. I admit, this is the kind of product placement I wouldn't be ok with in anything I would want to take seriously, but as its own weird little thing, it does sound like the kind of gonzo idiocy I sometimes enjoy.

Negative examples that come to my mind:

The 2001 movie "Evolution" with David Duchovny showing off a certain brand of shampoo.
And, of course, the "Cast Away" movie starring Tom Hanks with obnoxious placements by a delivery company... FedUp or something.

In a way, their ad campaign succeeded in raising my brand awareness. Only on the wrong end of the spectrum where I actively try to avoid any contact with them. X-D

In games, I'm always delighted to see creatively made-up brands such as NukaCola. Replacing them with the "real" brand wouldn't be the same.

Honestly I can't think of a single time where I truly even noticed, or was ever bothered by noticing, I think I'm borderline immune to advertising so maybe I just gloss over it the same way I do in real life, I see advertising for real products everywhere so seeing them in games and movies just feels typical. In fact, sometimes real product placement (in movies especially) actually adds to the believability, like the giant neon Coca Cola billboards in Bladerunner.

If anything I tend to notice fakey product advertising in games far more.

I can't even get mad at that one, it's just so over-the-top shameless and self aware that the shampoo feels more like a punchline than an actual ad.

Oh, I forgot all about this game, this was the one time I really did wrinkle my nose at product placement, I had exactly the same reaction as you, I think it's because the the product being advertised is so logically incompatible with the type of game it's in, just so unjustifiably shoehorned in that it taints the experience with some really strong corpo-stank.

Sure, but that's Fallout. The whole thing is basically a retrofuturistic satire of the "Atomic Cafe" era USA. It fits there, even enchances the whole thing, but in a game or a movie set in a more realistic here and now, when it's not a satire or comedy, such fake-y brands stick out like sore thumb (like ReynardFox said).

Yes, there's nothing more annoying than those fake cola brands in the PC version of Shenmue, as they can't use real Coca-Cola logos for some reason.

Definitely prefer fake over real products because they actual require some creativity. Freckle Bitch's in Saints Row 2 is one of my favorites. ;)

The only one where I don't mind seeing more realistic advertisement is sports game just because it feels more authentic. *shrug* Energizers. Energizers everywhere! =P Any other game would just have had generic batteries instead.

Makes me wonder if something like Radithor would fit that setting. (I don't know if the trademark is still active, given that the drink in question was banned because it was outright deadly.) What if the movie is, itself, about a product? ("Barbie", for example, is an example of this. There's all sorts of Barbie stuff in that movie, including references to various things about the history (including mention of a certain discontinued Barbie).)

That's the thing: it's not the whether, but the how that matters with product placement.

An example from a series I've seen a lot of in the last year or two: car placement in some episodes of Burn Notice. It's just a little too obvious what's going on, and, while the show is not the most serious overall, it would need to be quite a bit goofier still to get me to swallow advertising that unsubtle without a grimace and/or eye roll. It's definitely not the worst product placement I've seen (though I can't think what would be), but it's near the bottom end of what I would consider tolerable.