It’s still only a beta, but it shows Ubisoft’s interest in blockchain. As of tomorrow, the players of Ghost Recon Breakpoint will be able to collect a tactical rifle not quite like the others. It is indeed an NFT, a cosmetic object available in a limited number of copies, which will all have a unique serial number, displayed on one of their textures and visible during the game.
These cosmetic items, which Ubisoft calls “Digits”, are accessible from Quartz, a new marketplace associated with a crypto wallet that will allow you to acquire and manage your NFTs.
For the moment, she presents three objects for Ghost Recon Breakpoint. A rifle, therefore, accessible free of charge to players of at least level 5, and two other pieces of equipment reserved for gamers much more invested (pants accessible from 100 hours of play and headphones accessible from… 600 hours).
The idea here is to avoid speculation around these objects, and to reserve them above all for the biggest fans of the franchise.
To make it all work, Ubisoft relied on Tezos’ blockchain and not Ethereum, which has traditionally been used to forge NFTs. The reason ? Tezos would be greener because it uses “proof of stake” to validate transactions.
In essence, this technique eliminates the mining (the “proof of work”) introduced by Bitcoin and still used by Ethereum, which is extremely energy intensive and therefore harmful to the environment.
According to Ubisoft, Quartz’s energy consumption would be “Equal to that of a classic database”. The publisher has also announced that it will communicate publicly on the environmental impact of this initiative.
All the Digits can then be resold by their owner if he wishes, on the Rarible and Objkt marketplaces, against Tezos. However, they will keep an indelible “trace” of each of their owners.
A badly received initiative
Ubisoft thus makes several promises: objects acquired in the form of Digit will be able to live “Outside its ecosystem” and why not, one day, be reused in other games, whether or not they are published by the French company. Players could also monetize time spent on their favorite titles, selling unique items they’ve acquired to the highest bidder.
These ambitions did not seem to convince the players. Just go to the page from the YouTube video of the announcement to realize it: Quartz was very freshly received, with some 800 “likes” against more than 6000 likes for a comment that simply says “You are lucky that people can no longer see the number of dislikes “!
Many see greed on the part of the publisher, but also fear that the video game sector will one day turn into a gigantic casino, where we will play less for entertainment than to win a few coins. digital.
Ubisoft is in any case not the only big name in the sector to take a close interest in NFTs. Electronic Arts would consider integrating them in particular to his soccer game Fifa, just like Square Enix, famous for its franchises tomb Raider and Final fantasy.