If you’ve been following Ubisoft’s relationship with the NFT space for the past year, you probably remember that the rogue release of Quartz NFTs in Ghost Recon Breakpoint was stopped in April after only a few months. At the time, however, Ubisoft said players should “stay tuned for more updates with features for the platform and future drops coming with other games!”
In the months since, however, Ubisoft seems to have become less enthusiastic about its future NFT plans. In a recent group Q&A following a press event at Ubisoft’s Paris headquarters (transcribed by GameIndustry.biz), CEO Yves Guillemot tried to clarify that the company is “still in research mode, I would say, when it comes to NFTs.”
“We’re really looking at all the new technologies. We’re very much on the cloud, on the new generation of voxels, and we’re looking at all the Web3 features. We tested some things recently that give us more information about how it can be used and what we should do in the video game universe So we’re testing the ground with some games and we’ll see if they really answer the players’ needs.
The bit about “responding to players’ needs” is particularly interesting in the wake of Ubisoft’s use of NFTs in Breaking point. In the months after Ubisoft gave away thousands of in-game NFTs, an Ars analysis found only 96 successful used sales for these in-game items on Objkt and Rarible (the only two marketplaces where such sales are allowed), with prices generally measured in equivalent tens of dollars. These third-party transfers were sold as one of the primary use cases for NFTs in the first place, so the lack of sales shows how little player interest there was for Breaking pointits NFT implementation.
Looking back, Guillemot said that “we probably weren’t good at saying we were doing research,” suggesting that this was always intended more as a toe-dipping experiment rather than a major investment in an exciting new technological playground. However, this reticence was not communicated when Ubisoft launched its Quartz NFTs last December.
At the time, the company described the effort in a press release as “the first building block in our ambitious vision to develop a true metaverse.” At the time, Ubisoft also discussed long-term plans for the blockchain to “genuinely make players stakeholders in our games … back into the hands of the value they generate through the time they spend, the items they buy or the content they create. online.”
Now, however, Guillemot is talking about NFTs as just one in a long line of wacky tech fads that Ubisoft likes to toy with when they’re new:
“As a company, we were early into VR, early into Wii — we’re always trying new things,” he said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always to ensure that we can bring a new experience to players that will be innovative and interesting. The goal of the company is always to create the best experience, and new technologies are always good for that because there’s less competition and people are more interested in trying new things on new technology.”
The weirdest part of Guillemot’s NFT remarks came when he spoke as if Ubisoft hadn’t launched its first NFT experiment yet. “We should have said we were working on it and when we have something that gives you a real advantage, we will bring it to you,” he said. “Exploration does not mean initiation.”
While we agree that explore does not mean launch, we would argue that Ubisoft actually launched NFTs in Breaking point December last year. The fact that Guillemot now says that Ubisoft is waiting until it has “something that gives you a real advantage” before possibly further “launch” tells you all you need to know about how quickly the company’s feelings about NFTs have changed.
