Lately, Ubisoft hasn’t really been very quick to take the floor to explain what is really going on internally. The rule is now broken, since French speaks to defend … the NFT. Ah.
A few weeks ago, Ubisoft launched into the deep end of NFTs by announcing the opening of the Quartz portal, a platform dedicated to the purchase of NFTs, “Digits” in the local newspeak. For this launch that almost no one had seen coming, it was the soldier Ghost Recon Breakpoint who was responsible for wiping the plasters. A few hours later, the presentation video was removed from Ubisoft’s YouTuvbe channel, the fault of these naughty players who really do not understand anything.
The blow went by itself
The sequence of events so far does not seem to prove the industry giant right, since an artist working on Apex Legends only found traces of 15 transactions on exchange platforms validated by Ubisoft. However, French persists and signs with the specialized site Decrypt.co.
In a new interview, it is the technical director of the blockchain Didier Genevois who justifies the choices of his employer:
We’ve received a lot of feedback since Quartz’s announcement, and we’re hearing both encouragement and player concerns. We understand where the sentiment towards this technology is coming from and we must continue to consider it every step of the way. We know this is a major change that will take time, but we will stay true to our principles.
“Because we can”
To develop its NFT activity applied to video games, Ubisoft has teamed up with the Aleph.im cloud service, intended to store over time the precious “unique” objects of Ghost Recon Breakpoint players, and no doubt more so :
Our main goal with Ubisoft Quartz is to show the true value of decentralization to our players. Aleph.im played a key role in realizing our vision by allowing us to go further and decentralize the storage of Digits metadata.
Big deal. On the other hand, Didier Genevois will not have a word for the many reservations formulated internally by Ubisoft employees themselves, including our colleagues from Kotaku echoed widely. Two weights, two measures ? It’s up to you to tell us.
