The Ubisoft executive has finally responded to the backlash from the community that the company is about to add NFTs to its games. And if you don’t know, it should immediately be clarified that back in December last year, the above-named publisher announced Quartz, an NFT platform that in turn allows people to buy and sell unique digital items, which were called Digits. And it is noteworthy that this step was criticized not only by fans and consumers of games from Ubisoft, but also by the employees themselves.
A lot of people immediately expressed significant concern about the impact of NFT on the “game environment”, while one developer from Ubisoft even stated that it was “just another way to milk consumers for money”. And in general, the reaction of the players to the Quartz system was extremely fast. Within the first 24 hours after Ubisoft announced this new platform through its YouTube trailer, over 35,000 people hit the dislike button, while just over 1,300 people liked the video.
So it’s an obvious fact that Ubisoft’s first attempt at NFTs was extremely unsuccessful. Some of the NFT items were, of course, given away by the company to players who reached a certain playing time or experience level in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The company offered players the opportunity to buy several NFTs on favorable terms, but sales were reportedly incredibly sluggish. And in general, the meaning and purpose of adding NFT is incomprehensible to anyone for another reason. The fact is that one of the players of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint bought one NFT skin for a pistol with a small unique serial number.
As a result, after using the skin in-game, he reported that he “doesn’t feel like it’s any different from using any of the other cosmetics that are in-game and available for purchase through a variety of means, including donat”. However, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, Nicolas Poire, suggested that gamers simply don’t understand the usefulness of NFTs, and reinforced his point with the following statement: “I think gamers don’t understand what the secondary digital market can give them. At the moment, due to the current situation and the context of NFT, gamers really believe that it is, firstly, destroying the planet, and secondly, is a simple tool for speculation. Be that as it may, at the moment the fate of NFT in Ubisoft projects remains a mystery, and what it will result in in the future is also unknown.
