Perhaps no recent backlash in the video game industry has been more intense than Ubisoft’s Quartz announcement, which implements Non-Fungible Token (NFT) systems into games.
Immediately, fans of Ubisoft’s games were utterly furious — with the announcement video garnering over 10,000 dislikes in no time flat. Despite the overwhelmingly negative response, Ubisoft isn’t giving up on NFTs. Quite the opposite, even.
In an interview with Finder, Ubisoft’s strategic innovations lab VP Nicolas Pouard claims that the audience is in the wrong about NFTs.
“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them,” Pouard said. “For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second just a tool for speculation.”
“But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. 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,” Pouard continues. “So, it’s really, for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.”
Ubisoft's man in charge of their NFT project Quartz says that the negative reaction was expected and explains that players just don't understand it
"We know it's not an easy concept to grasp"
Ubisoft will also continue with their NFTs planshttps://t.co/8VcRclbonn pic.twitter.com/9Vxpt0LCFf
— Nibel (@Nibellion) January 28, 2022
Ubisoft isn’t the only company catching heat for dabbling in cryptocurrency technology. Behaviour Interactive went through something similar during a Dead By Daylight promotional event, as did S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl developer GSC Game World, which removed all NFT integration. Voice actor Troy Baker went through something similar after pre-emptively antagonizing fans not interested in NFTs.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts will likely persist with their attempts at pushing the technology into video games for some time to come.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
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