On NFTs, and why Ubisoft hates video games (and you)

Ubisoft Crap Source: Ubisoft / Windows Primal

Discussion about the blockchain and the technologies therein are topics that seem almost impossible to escape these days, although the debate over whether crypto is a good or a bad thing intrinsically is non what nosotros're discussing today. We are instead discussing how game developers are lining up NFTs as the next weapon in its endless quest to dispense customers out of money, and then they can get rich and we can stay poor.

Ubisoft revealed its very own NFT platform, dubbed Ubisoft ~~Bullshit™️~~ Quartz™️. It's an all-new platform not besides dissimilar from the company's rewards system, which gives players in-game loot for simply engaging with its titles. Imagine that very same system, only instead of getting a slice of free in-game loot that is indefinitely available, you're given a "express-edition" detail, which you tin can then trade away to other players for coin. Seems fine on the surface, right?

NFTs and crypto, much like anything, can be used for good or evil. NFTs tin can be a way for independent artists to sidestep gallery fees and murky industry politics and get paid directly for their work. Merely that'due south not what is going on here. Giving the keys to companies similar Ubisoft and EA who care more about coin than the proficient in gaming seems like a bad idea, and we have to sit up and ask ourselves whether nosotros really desire this.

Every bit we look ahead to the future of what gaming may look like, information technology's time Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and other platform holders look difficult at this technology and ask themselves whether they really want to bring real-world economic inequalities into video game worlds.

Ubisoft Bullshit™️

First off, what the hell is an NFT anyway? Conceptually, an NFT is a digital asset with authenticity that tin exist verified in an incorruptible cryptographic code known every bit the blockchain. NFTs are traded using cryptocurrency, which were envisioned every bit a fashion to liberate people from the cyberbanking institution. The utopic (and potentially naive) vision of cryptocurrency is actively beingness perverted by establishment entities, like Ubisoft, that are seeing it as a style to make even more money than they already do.

Ubisoft isn't doing this for YOU as it and then boldly claims in its Quartz teaser. Ubisoft envisions a world where it'southward removed from the word of a digital horse armor DLC being sold for tens of thousands of dollars — manufactured scarcity will set the value, and players on minor incomes stand to miss out.

Ubisoft'southward foray into NFTs is hardly surprising. It noted it was interested in it at a contempo financial earnings call, alongside other mega publishers like EA. Many publishers accept fallen afoul over taking microtransactions as well far, with EA's Battlefront Two pay-to-win controversy as an obvious example, only this whole NFT thing could potentially obfuscate similar criticisms in the futurity — supply and need go an piece of cake scapegoat if people forget that Ubisoft controls the supply.

Ubisoft Bullshit Source: UbisoftPictured: Ubisoft getting into retail.

Equally of today, Ubisoft'southward NFT purchases are fairly innocuous and tin be earned fairly hands, but the way Ubisoft wants Quartz to work as of today is ultimately irrelevant. The endgame is what matters, and the endgame is a murky earth where only the biggest celebrities and influencers have enough buying power to grab the coolest skins and assets, injecting the sense of inequality we actively endeavor to escape from in the real world into the video game world. It'south right there in the website for Quartz: "Be Unique," Ubisoft says, psychological manipulation via FOMO as its central pillar. Many of these games and NFTs will undoubtedly target kids, too, which is a juicy lawsuit merely waiting to happen.

Richer players are worth more than to Ubisoft than you lot or I, and through this organisation, Ubisoft wants you to know it through manufactured scarcity. To put it some other way, Ubisoft wants you lot to know that it hates y'all.

This FOMO, of course, is entirely manufactured. Ubisoft can control the supply of the NFTs it'll inject into the Bullshit™️, only what would exist the betoken of making all avails equal if it can convince a millionaire influencer to spend $10,000 on a impaired helmet, and take a cutting of that transaction? Richer players are worth more to Ubisoft than you or I, and through this organization, Ubisoft wants you lot to know it through manufactured scarcity. To put it another style, Ubisoft wants you to know that information technology hates you.

All of this disregards the debate over the power consumption that comes along with cryptocurrency mining, and the fence over how much of its value is heavily tied upwards to illegal activities. Of course, Ubisoft doesn't care where the currency came from, nor does information technology care whether information technology is contributing to the destruction of the Earth itself. Laughably, Ubisoft'south Quartz system is built on the comparatively efficient Tezos blockchain, but the 2d NFT they added to Ghost Recon Breakpoint asks you to AFK for 600 hours to earn access to the skin. Even a conservative calculation for how much power 600 hours of AFKing in Ghost Recon on a next-gen console uses makes Ubisoft'south free energy pledge on Quartz completely laughable.

Ubisoft could implement features like an in-house market place for gratis without the blockchain if it wanted to. But information technology doesn't, considering it loses the scarcity angle it desperately needs to inflate the prices on these pretend items.

Platform holders need to make a choice

Xbox Series X Controller Source: Matt Brown | Windows Cardinal

If Microsoft and other platform holders are to nip this in the bud, they need to sit and have a real think about what they want gaming on their platforms to await similar in the next decade. Steam has already banned it, simply we've not heard much from the other big three on the topic.

I'k by no means against NFTs or cryptocurrencies as a concept, specially in a magical theoretical globe where all energy use is renewable. What I am confronting is how companies similar Ubisoft are seeking to implement them in gaming, with zero consideration for the inequality they're bringing into gaming so its execs tin can go richer, at the entire industry's expense.

I got into Nighttime Souls recently, and subsequently hundreds of hours reviewing service-type games that advertise random crap to you at every possible opportunity, I couldn't believe how nice it was to actually simply play a video game, without having external considerations. We're losing the best aspects of gaming to the greedy machinations of companies like Ubisoft who accept lost sight of the art of the video game. Increasingly, I feel like game publishers like Ubisoft seem to actually hate video games, and wish they were involved in banking instead.

Ubisoft Lame Source: Ubisoft

Ubisoft'southward claims that Quartz is well-nigh giving gamers "control" over skins seems disingenuous. What happens to the value of these NFTs if the games attached to them are shut down, for case? I assume the reason Ubisoft hasn't launched this in the Eu is so it tin examine legislation to figure out how likely information technology would be sued if changes to the Quartz organization or games being close down affects the value of the tokens.

I'd exist less irritated about information technology if they were just direct-upwards honest, and were like, "Yeah, this is and so nosotros can make a load of coin, and actually has nothing to do with making games more than fun." Although, I suppose you'd need a dash of dishonesty to build a system then devoid of morality like Quartz.

Game publishers like Ubisoft seem to actually hate video games.

It'southward a glace slope that ultimately began with microtransactions themselves. I complaining my naivete for thinking companies wouldn't take it any further than cosmetics anybody could purchase for a apartment rate. Make no fault, publisher-owned platforms like Quartz are the other face of pay to win, bringing real-globe economic inequality into video game worlds. The era of earning items through gameplay is existence phased out. Games were traditionally a place where everybody could come together and relish experiences on an equal footing, and Ubisoft will drive a non-fungible pale through that underappreciated tenet of gaming so Yves Guillemot can purchase a new yacht.

Information technology's not about you lot, and it's not near NFTs. It'south about Ubisoft execs getting rich while tearing up one of the things that make games great in the process. And yep, deep downwardly, I know information technology'due south already a foregone conclusion. But hey, that'southward commercialism, infant. The market decides what the marketplace wants — for better or worse.

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