Let us take a moment to chronicle the brief history of Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The game actually launched back in 2019, though it was only a middling success for the franchise. At the end of 2021, Ubisoft attempted to revitalize it by going all-in on NFTs with a “new experience” it called Ubisoft Quartz, but it didn’t matter since no gamers wanted to buy Ubisoft’s “digits” at all, let alone in a game with an ever-narrowing future. In December, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that “these NFTs are just the beginning“; in January, Ubisoft VP Nicolas Pouard said gamers “just don’t get it.”
But gamers did get it, unfortunately for the Ubisoft execs, and those NFTs were only the beginning of the end, as Ubisoft admitted yesterday that it has ceased development of the game altogether.
Of course, the company talks up the updates it’s pushed out over the last two years, and it promises to keep the servers online in maintenance mode. Either way, it’s a sad day for the legitimate developers and players who didn’t want anything to do with corporate’s latest money-grubbing scheme. (The reply tweets from players who did like the game will break your heart.) It’d be real great if Ubisoft and other companies still trying to pivot to blockchain hustles could learn something wholesome from this debacle, but we won’t hold our breath.
Hey Ghosts, we have an important message we would like to share with you all 👇 pic.twitter.com/kYeyVWVtgi
— Ghost Recon (@GhostRecon) April 5, 2022
