Ubisoft executive says gamers ‘don’t get’ NFTs

Ubisoft’s executive in charge of the company’s new, and generally despised, NFT endeavor said in an interview that Ubisoft is “accustomed to” such immediately negative responses, and said video game fans “don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them.”

“For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second a tool for speculation,” Nicolas Pouard, who leads Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab, told the Australian product comparison site Finder. “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.”

Ubisoft had announced that it was going into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in December. This type of digital asset is commonly compared with a valuable piece of art. Ubisoft’s NFTs are called Digits, and the publisher said they will “provide players the ability to personalize their experience and complete their missions with style.”

The response from the gaming audience was an instant and constant thumbs-down — literally. The video that announced Digits’ exchange platform Quartz received 31,000 likes on YouTube. Ubisoft removed the video from YouTube days later. The backlash continued unabated, and included Ubisoft employees who criticized the venture as an exercise in “private property, speculation, artificial scarcity, and egoism.”

Video gamers’ hostility to NFTs intensified with GSC Game World’s plan to bring NFTs to STALKER II: The Heart of Chernobyl“The sequel to an 13-year-old hit cult game, “the” has been in production since 2018. Gamers’ angry reactions, including vows not to buy the game, convinced GSC to call off its plans. The reactions to both Ubisoft and GSC Game World’s NFT announcements have since gained mainstream attention, where other sectors haven’t challenged NFTs’ legitimacy nearly as much.

Pouard was asked if NFTs within video games would amount to new forms of microtransactions or loot boxes. Pouard said that NFTs are not monetized in any way. “At no point will we force our players to use Quartz and Digits,” Pouard said. “We just inform them that there is a new system that could provide them with higher value than the existing ones.”

Pouard added, “We’ve made it so it’s somewhat hard for people to get into it. It is necessary to purchase the game. You must play at least two hours.” These barriers make it more difficult for pure speculators to get in and warp the market for these NFTs, he argued. He also stated that not all Ubisoft games will be required to use NFTs in any way.

“The model of play to earn is about allowing players to make their own money by adding value to the whole ecosystem,” Pouard argued.

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