Ubisoft responds to NFT criticism

When Ubisoft presented the NFT marketplace “Quartz” at the beginning of December last year, its own expectations were high. The French company was the first major publisher to publish for one of its AAA titles (Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint) a collection of unique optical items for weapons, outfits and vehicles based on the Tezos blockchain. The aim was to offer the players “more autonomy and freedom of action”.

However, a large part of the community saw it decidedly differently and flooded the YouTube trailer by Ubisoft Quartz with dislikes. Although the exact number of negative ratings is not apparent at first glance – YouTube deactivated this feature in November last year – with individual browser add-ons (such as Return YouTube Dislike) the relationship can be understood again. A clear picture emerges from this. There were 1,732 positive ratings and 42,000 dislikes – a devastating verdict for the French publisher.

Ubisoft Quartz now before the end?

The question is, what’s next for Quartz? Has the project failed? Was that it with Ubisoft and blockchain? The answer is: no. The company announced that it would continue to hold Quartz.

We’re very pleased that a strong but rather silent community has started using this feature, and we look forward to adding more features to the platform that will appeal to an even larger audience.

In general, you have received a lot of feedback, writes the French publisher. The negative response is generally attributed to the buzzword NFT, which in the past would have made headlines “about speculation, environmental impact, or scams.”

Nevertheless, one is convinced that blockchain technology can change the gaming industry for the better. Upon request, Ubisoft stated:

When a player buys a virtual item today, they only pay for access to that item. With blockchain and NFTs, players are free to sell them on a secondary market once they stop playing with them

The NFT marketplace was launched as an “experiment” to “understand how decentralization can open up new opportunities for players”. It should open up new opportunities to give gamers value for their time, work and money investment – Ubisoft intends to continue to adhere to this goal.

However, a few questions remain unanswered: what actually happens to the “digits” when the associated game is no longer supported by the publisher? And how does this affect the value of NFTs? A request to Ubisoft went unanswered at the time of writing.