Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the open-world game, along comes Ubisoft with playable NFTs. Yeah, that’s seriously about to become a thing. The French gaming giant has announced a new platform — Ubisoft Quartz — dedicated to “playable and energy-efficient NFTs in AAA games”.
Which is exactly what it sounds like. The company is about to make some in-game items wholly unique. Or, rather, it’ll do this to batches of them. You can equip ’em, use ’em, sell ’em, and buy ’em. We’re getting some serious Counterstrike: Global Offensive vibes here.
Want Ubisoft’s Digits?
Ubisoft Quartz is how players will manage these playable NFTs — called Digits. These are, “collectable in-game vehicles, weapons, and pieces of equipment” that are stamped and numbered. This lets the company drop a batch of items instead of just one at a time.
These items keep track of who owned them, so each time they change hands they’ll update their history. They’re not overpowered weapons or gear, however. Just cosmetic skins, otherwise you’ll have folks spending money for tangible advantages. Can’t have that, can we? Ownership info is handled by a blockchain because it’s not an NFT otherwise.
“To operate the first energy-efficient NFTs playable in a AAA game, Ubisoft Quartz leverages Tezos, a blockchain running on a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, using exceedingly less energy to operate than Proof-of-Work blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.”
Ubisoft’s launch is the beginning of a four-year blockchain experiment, and it starts with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Folks who are in the Quartz beta and playing the much-maligned-but-honestly-better-now shooter on Windows will have access to drops (known as Editions). These begin from 9 December but are limited to players at level 5 and above who are over the age of eighteen.
Oh, yes, and you’ll need to be a resident of the US, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Australia, or Brazil. At least at first. Depending on how this goes, expect it to become a permanent fixture. Ubisoft’s also considered the problem of hoarders — no player can own more than one Digit of any specific Edition.