Ubisoft has yet to accept that neither the playerbase nor the company’s employees have any love for NFTs. The announcement trailer for Ubisoft Quartz–a platform designed to inject NFTs into classic games where they don’t belong–was instantly review bombed, with over 95% dislikes. In December 2021, developers took to Ubisoft’s internal social media network to complain about the decisions being made by those at the top. At the end of January 2022, Strategic Innovations Lab VP Nicolas Pouard addressed the negative feedback by basically claiming that the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the company’s NFT rollout was because players and employees simply “don’t get it.”
In another forced and tone-deaf move, the company has reportedly begun handing out special NFTs to members of the Ghost Recon team to celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary. According to Kotaku, an announcement was sent out to specific members of the dev team reading “With the opening of the Ubisoft Quartz platform in December, we thought of creating an exclusive Digit for you, the ‘Ghost Recon 20th anniversary cap!’ If you want to receive this exclusive Digit, we will inject it into your crypto-wallet on the 9th of March.” (‘Digit’ is what Ubisoft calls an NFT.)
Ubisoft originally announced that it would not be using Ethereum due to the energy required. The company chose instead to leverage Tezos’ more energy-efficient blockchain. However, Ubisoft’s NFT partner Frontier almost immediately began selling tokens on OpenSea using Ethereum, further adding to this PR disaster.
“Part of our role as a key investor is to provide them with counsel and guidance on the most eco-friendly and efficient technology choices,” a company representative stated.
In posts made to Ubisoft’s internal social media network just last week, developers stressed their dislike for the plans. One reads “How can you look at private property, speculation, artificial scarcity, and egoism, then say ‘yes, this is good, I want that, let’s put it in art?”
