Ubisoft is one of the first gaming companies to jump into the NFT space with both feet, and today one of their leading executives finds themselves in hot water.
As gaming companies such as Konami, and prominent voice actors such as Troy Baker continue to snap the chains protecting the gaming world from NFTs, more things continue to happen to aggravate the beehive of the gaming community. Companies that deal in NFTs continue to push how good they are for the creator and expect capital in return.
Ubisoft announced back in December they were launching this new Quartz idea that would take NFTs into the gaming space and be ‘revolutionary.’ This notably gained the ire of the gaming community. With impunity the masses flooded Twitter in a complete rage. What’s weirder is this occurred far after the whole Star Wars Battlefront II pay-to-win microtransaction fiasco. It gets even worse, fans continuously seep with excitement when gaming companies announce “there will be no microtransactions,” EA seemingly learned from their blunder.
However, when it comes to Ubisoft, most games they release have microtransactions and the NFT announcement sparked more stress on their fans. What’s more, today it was revealed during this interview with the Vice President at Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab, Nicolas Pouard and Ubisoft’s Blockchain Technical Director, Didier Genevois that gamers simply don’t get it. This excerpt was pulled from the interview:
Well, it was a reaction we were expecting. We know it’s not an easy concept to grasp. But Quartz is really just a first step that should lead to something bigger. Something that will be more easily understood by our players. That’s the way we think about it and why we will keep experimenting. We will keep releasing features and services around this first initiative. And our belief is that, piece by piece, the puzzle will be revealed and understood by our players. We hope they will better understand the value we offer them.
Nicolas Pouard
This is on the level of confusion. The most notable sentence here is “it was a reaction we were expecting,” the move just HAD to be made. It goes further with this:
But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself.
So, it’s really, for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.
Nicolas Pouard
The constant reiteration that the fans don’t understand what they’re buying is a little farfetched. Ubisoft should see the whole picture the fans see when it’s regarding their games, but we also know that’s not an easy concept to grasp, the outrage on Twitter shows the plot thicken.
As the internet continues to explode over the NFT pushback, and companies continue to push forward, it seems an immovable object is being met with an unstoppable force. Ubisoft did admit in the interview “the player is always right” but it’s difficult to know how, when NFTs aren’t easily understood by players.
