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Ubisoft’s recent push to release NFT items for its major video game franchises generated sizable backlash from NFT-skeptical gamers—and now the first part of that experiment is concluding as post-release support ends for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
The squad-based shooter, which was released in October 2019, will not receive any additional Tezos-based NFT in-game items via the Ubisoft Quartz platform. However, this announcement isn’t specific to NFTs for Ghost Recon Breakpoint: no additional content will be released for the game, including extra modes and features without a blockchain component.
Ubisoft released the final NFTs for Ghost Recon Breakpoint on March 17, according to the Quartz website, following the program’s launch in December. The publisher released items like weapons and armor as NFTs, which can be resold via secondary marketplaces. An NFT acts like a deed of ownership for a unique digital item, and Ubisoft calls its NFTs “Digits.”
The Quartz initiative will continue on with additional games in the future, however. The website teases “future drops coming with other games,” but no titles were announced. Ubisoft is the firm behind such franchises as Assassin’s Creed, Just Dance, and Far Cry, among others.
Ubisoft is the first major video game publisher to release playable in-game items for an existing game. The move was met with significant pushback from gamers, many of whom have been vocal about the growing NFT industry.
Some complained about the apparent lack of utility for these first NFT items, which weren’t significantly different from other non-NFT items in the game. Others have criticized the environmental impact of NFTs and crypto in general—although Tezos is considered to be a relatively energy-efficient blockchain network when compared to Ethereum or Bitcoin.
In any case, Ubisoft intended to stay the course. In December, after the initial Quartz platform launch, Ubisoft’s Blockchain Technical Director Didier Genevois told Decrypt that NFT items represented a “major change that will take time,” and that the firm would continue working in the space while considering players’ concerns.
While Quartz represented Ubisoft’s first push to integrate NFTs into existing games, the publisher has been participating in the blockchain ecosystem for years. It developed a Minecraft-esque blockchain game prototype in 2018 called HashCraft, and released smaller NFT game projects like Rabbids Token and One Shot League in recent years.
Ubisoft has also supported numerous crypto startups via its Entrepreneurs Lab program, and invested in metaverse investment firm Animoca Brands last fall. The publisher’s Rabbids IP will be implemented within the upcoming Ethereum-based metaverse game The Sandbox, which Animoca publishes.
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