Ubisoft has been dominating some of the headlines in the games industry over the past week following its announcement that it’s adding NFTs to Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Ubisoft Quartz is a new platform for players to acquire ‘Digits’, which are NFTs launching in beta with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, each composed of a fixed number of cosmetic items and launching in certain territories like NA, Spain, France and more, but not the UK.
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a unique digital asset (usually an image or a piece of digital art) stored on a blockchain. NFTs can usually be bought and owned and re-sold.
The publisher’s initial press release mentioned ‘playable and energy-efficient NFTs in triple-A games‘, and Esports News UK was curious as to whether Rainbow Six Siege and other Ubisoft titles may be getting NFTs in the future.
We reached out to Ubisoft about this and heard back.
“We’re still in our exploration phase and are focusing our efforts on the launch of Ubisoft Quartz with Ghost Recon Breakpoint, to take blockchain’s implementation further than any other platforms for a AAA game,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told Esports News UK.
“It is not planned to implement Ubisoft Quartz in other games at this stage.”
So while that is the plan right now, it could of course change in the future.
“It is not planned to implement Ubisoft Quartz in other games at this stage.”
Ubisoft
Ubisoft is describing this as a ‘large-scale experiment’ that leverages Tezos, a blockchain running on a ‘proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, using exceedingly less energy to operate than proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum’.
Players must reach XP Level 5 in Breakpoint and be at least 18 years old to access the NFTs.
The general reaction to the NFTs from Ubisoft has largely been mixed to negative.
It’s been reported that in order to unlock the ‘Wolf Enhanced Helmet A’ NFT (of which there are 250 available) in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, players need to put in 600 hours of playtime on PC. And a report from Kotaku claims that Ubisoft devs don’t understand the company’s move into NFTs.
In other recent video game/esports NFT news, ESL unveiled an NFT fashion drop with partnered CSGO teams and LDN UTD launches NFT collection supported by the Rio Ferdinand Foundation.
Earlier this year, Semper Fortis Esports moved into Hearthstone and NFT game Axie Infinity and launched a new ‘play-to-earn’ division, and Fnatic announced a new crypto partner and shirt sponsor in multi-year deal worth more than £10m, with NFTs on the way.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
