The NFT’s have been talking about them a lot for several months and you have surely not missed the phenomenon – unless, of course, you are a hermit holed up at the bottom of a cave. The “non fungible token” or “non fungible token” in French are — to put it simply — digital objects, virtual therefore, unique that you can buy online in particular thanks to cryptocurrency. Each object is associated with a series of numbers unique registered in the blockchain (a place of storage and transmission of digital information).
If the phenomenon was first talked about on the art market, some studios soon positioned themselves in the niche – not without raising many criticisms within the various communities of players. We can think of GSC Game World which offered for sale an NFT allowing you to become a “Human Meta” in its next title, STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl. Faced with the outcry, the publisher finally backed down.
Ubisoft persists and signs
It’s not the only studio to have drawn the ire of gamers when it comes to NFTs. At the end of last year, Ubisoft announced the creation of Ubisoft Quartz, a system presented as “a new experience for our players, built on our vision to create an ever-greater connection between you and the game worlds you love.” Thanks to this “famous experience”, you can acquire “Digits”, Ubisoft’s first NFTs, playable in several of the publisher’s games (the first being Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint) and based on energy-efficient technology. The speech remains similar for all NFT, they are all unique, keep the history of their former owners and can be resold at leisure.
The announcement did not fail to react badly with a torrent of negative opinions on the project. Ubisoft even removed its presentation video a few hours after it was posted in the face of the avalanche of criticism. However, the studio does not seem to want to let go of the matter and has sent two brave soldiers to the front line: Didier Genevois, Blockchain Technical Director of Ubisoft and Nicholas Pouard, vice president of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab to confront an angry community.
In an interview with Finder, they wanted to respond to the criticisms and concerns of the community, and as much to tell you that some answers are lunar. Firstly, they are not surprised by the poor reception of the project, explaining that “It was a reaction we expected. We know it’s not an easy concept to understand.” We already feel from here the clumsy communication error that will set the fire to the powder, and it is the first of a long list.
“I think gamers don’t understand what a digital secondary market can do for them. Right now, due to the current situation and the NFT context, gamers really believe it’s first to destroy the planet, and then just a tool of speculation. But what we [chez Ubisoft] Let’s see first, it’s game ending. Game ending is all about giving players the option to resell their items once they’re done with them or after they’ve finished playing the game itself.
So it really is, for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t understand right now.”
Being able to resell your famous NFTs once you have finished a game or are even tired of it is not a bad idea in itself. But if we put into perspective that Ubi will close Hyper Scape, its free-to-play Battle Royale after only a year and a half of existence, we can be a little more skeptical about the future of these NFTs. Certainly, there is none on Hyper Scape, but if that had been the case, as much to say that the players who would have had the bad idea to invest in the game would have had it clearly in the bone.
Of course, we are not all experts in NFTs, cryptocurrency or even renowned economists, but basing your communication on the limit of understanding of the players, we will have already seen better. One thing seems certain, Ubisoft will not abandon its project, we bet that the studio remains attentive to its players if it does not want to take a violent backlash.
nft
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