In December 2021, Ubisoft joined myriad other companies in trying to drive the NFT craze to the mainstream when it launched Ubisoft Quartz, an NFT scheme linked to the flagging shooter Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. The release was an almost immediate disaster, as it was being avoided by players of the game, and even though a company exec claimed it was because people didn’t “get it,” the whole plan – and Breakpoint – ended development in April 2022.
Despite Ubisoft’s failure and the ongoing wider collapse of crypto and NFTs, the studio and its new partner Integral Reality Labs is apparently going to try it a second time, this time with a release of NFTs – I’m sorry, “smart collectibles” – tied to the Assassin’s Creed franchise. These so-called “digital souls” can be customized with different outfits, weapons, and poses, then redeemed into a 3-D printed statue that’s suspended in a transparent cube. The NFTs themselves will be minted on the Polygon Etherium network, with higher rarity NFTs offering more of these customization options.
At the very least, Ubisoft has learned the lesson that people don’t want NFTs in their games, but it’s clearly going to try to get NFTs about its games out in the wild, tying the tech to physical merchandise because reasons.
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