Ubisoft strongly believes in NFT. Its CEO did not hide his enthusiasm in an internal meeting.
Yves Guillemot believes that NFTs will follow in the footsteps of DLCs, microtransactions and other lootboxes to the point of being generalized.
Ubisoft developers worried about NFTs
Nothing and no one escapes the NFT. The latest trend in cryptocurrency is everywhere, even in video games. Very early on, Ubisoft announced its ambition to become one of the first players in the industry to use this virtual currency. Last week, the Spanish publisher jumped into the deep end with the launch of Quartz, a platform intended to distribute in-game items in the form of NFTs. Each player is then free to exchange or resell the items purchased on the marketplaces.
Of course, the distribution had barely started when some items were already offered at exorbitant prices. Count for example between €394 and €394 for a virtual rifle. Just that. Inevitably, Ubisoft's new initiative was poorly received, both by the general public and internally. Several developers have made their concerns known, fearing that the efforts to restore the image of the game at the disastrous launch in 000, will be reduced to nothing by the decisions of the company. Kotaku has obtained internal documents that indeed demonstrate an "unprecedented" "negative shift" in player sentiment toward Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
NFTs, the future microtransactions?
Faced with the concerns of developers, Yves Guillemot spoke with the teams of Ubisoft Paris, in charge of the publisher's first game to host NFTs. The co-founder is formal: virtual currency will eventually be accepted. Several inside sources who attended the meeting report that he compares the new blockchain trend and its negative reception to other emerging industry novelties that are now commonplace, namely DLCs, microtransactions, and lootboxes. A comparison that has not alleviated the fears of the teams, since several members point out that Ubisoft's microtransactions, such as XP boosters, are still poorly received by players and at the heart of controversy.
So what would make NFTs acceptable to users, what would they bring in terms of gameplay to democratize? Guillemot evaded the question asked by its employees, preferring to drift on the metaverse and the possibility for players to build and sell virtual houses. The man at the head of Ubisoft made numerous references to Roblox and its hybrid model without explaining which aspects could be transposed to Quartz. While the meeting raised more questions than answers for the developers, for them one thing is certain: Ghost Recon Breakpoint's NFTs are just the beginning.
