The new non-fungible token (NFT) project of French gaming giant Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Quartz, faces strong pushback from the gaming community.
Ubisoft revealed the launch of the beta version of Quartz through a short video on YouTube on December 8, which has 214,721 views at the time of this writing. The project aims to combine NFTs and blockchain technology with existing Triple A game titles, and announced “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint” as its first game to officially integrate NFTs.
The video introduces Quartz as a platform that allows gamers to “collect Ubisoft’s first playable and energy-efficient NFTs” which are dubbed “Digits.”.
YouTube has recently changed its policy to hide the number of dislikes a video receives on the platform, however, the number can still be accessed through Google Chrome extensions. When using an extension, the video currently shows 1,400 “likes” and 37,000 “dislikes”, which equates to a “dislike” percentage of approximately 96%.
One of the most important comments of the video, from user “OperatorDrewski”, currently has 2,600 “likes” and zero “dislikes”, and criticizes Ubisoft’s NFT project for seeing it as a quick way to make money rather than improving the overall gaming experience:
“To me, this is a blatant sign that they are taking advantage of the Ghost Recon franchise, literally, for every penny, while putting minimal effort into the game itself. I will not play a GR game in the future if there is this level of degeneracy in the team. “
“They’ve taken a solid franchise and made it a laughingstock.”he added.
This opinion seems to be shared by a significant number of the community; Several users on Twitter also lashed out at the firm in response to its latest announcement, threatening to uninstall the firm’s games and fully boycott Ubisoft..
Because of my personal view of NFTs and not because of the environment entirely, I will now proceed to uninstall anything related to you right now and cease further purchases of your games.
That is all. For people that dislike Current Ubi’s marketing, just stop buying.
– Skyeeeely – Lazy VStreamer Cat (@Sukaaaily) December 7, 2021
Based on my personal opinion on NFTs, and not the environment as a whole, I am going to proceed to uninstall everything related to you right now and stop buying your games. That’s it. For people who don’t like Current Ubi marketing, just stop shopping.
A Dec. 8 post on Reddit’s r / gaming page shows a concerted effort to boycott NFT’s new project.. The post titled “do not support” Quartz, the new market for NFT Ubisoft “by” u / WolverineKuzuri93 “currently has 2,500 comments and an upvote rate of 93%, with more than 13,400 upvotes.
The Redditor highlights similar issues to the YouTube commenter, noting that:
“We have to oppose this practice. […] This is just another way to get money out of gamers with cosmetics instead of focusing on making quality products in depth. We have to let companies know that this is against the consumer. “
“I’m not entirely against the concept of using an NFT-style system for digital games. For example, actually owning your digital copy instead of a simple license to be able to sell it to another user’s account, that is the future of digital games. What I am opposed to is how Ubisoft does it with in-game items, “he added..
Players’ reaction to NFTs
It is not the first time that a large company has been criticized for considering or launching into the world of NFTs. Cointelegraph reported last month that the community messaging app Discord was forced to backtrack on its Ethereum-based NFT integration plans, after the gaming community bombed CEO Jason Citron.
Citron initially referenced his company’s plans via a beta feature screenshot showing compatibility with Ethereum’s NFT wallet, however it was quickly beset with thousands of comments. asking him to drop the plans, along with threats from users that they would cancel their paid Nitro subscriptions.
Unlike the Ubisoft case, in which the community appears to be upset by what they claim to be money theft, crypto-skeptics on Discord believe that NFTs are a scam and harm the environment due to the energy required to mine cryptocurrencies.
Cointelegraph has reached out to Ubisoft representatives for comment, and will update the story if they respond.
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