AAA game studio Ubisoft (which recently announced exploration of blockchain tech) has launched its Quartz platform for NFTS.
Quartz is calling the NFTs "Digits" - referring to the mint or "serial number" of the token. Leveraging Tezos, Quartz is also heavily leaning on the eco-friendly nature of the blockchain - equating the transaction impact to streaming 30 seconds of video. External wallets are supported it appears, though it's not possible to link with the service unless you have two factor authentication enabled and have reached Level 5 in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint on the PC (console gamers aren't supported at this point in time). Given the separate Ubisoft account structure, it's possible for console players to be supported - effectively linking a Tezos wallet to Quartz, and authenticating via an Ubisoft login (though how platforms would react to that is unclear).
It's not entirely unexpected that they'd integrate cosmetics as NFTs, it is a bit surprising they're choosing Ghost Recon: Breakpoint for the launch - given the game's mediocre reviews.
Quartz is scheduled to have its first drop on December 9th, 2021 1:00PM EST with a free limited Ghost Recon: Breakpoint NFT.
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It seems like its no different than the Team Fortress 2/Counter-Strike: GO Market that Steam has. I don't know but this will be interesting to see how other companies and their playerbase adapt.
Agreed that this isn't exactly a new idea - having skins being tradeable by players. The reason why this is bigger/more interesting than CS:GO skins/Steam Marketplace is that it takes place on Tezos and the assets are tradeable on external/third party marketplaces. With Steam's model, even if a player is able to sell a skin, those funds are locked in the Steam eco-system. You can gain credits, but there's no way to withdraw those outside of the system. On Quartz, you could trade the item on Objkt, receive Tezos and now it's an exit from the Ubisoft ecosystem, there's no lock in like TF2/CS:GO. Anyways, it'll be interesting to see how this goes, but there's so much salt in the comments it should carry a sodium warning. I much prefer to see !PIZZA in the comments over here on Hive. Cheers!
Sad to see all the haters commenting tho
It's not entirely unexpected - it's a drastic shift in direction for most people. NFT is still synonymous with Ethereum sadly and with that people (justifiably) think of gas fees and environmental impacts. Looking back at the introduction of Horse Armor in Elder Scrolls Oblivion and fast forwarding to the micro transaction landscape of today, people will be cautious of how this could turn predatory in nature. The flip side of that argument, assuming use of a proper public blockchain (in this case, Tezos) and not an "internal" or "custom" blockchain is that players are able to resell cosmetics, verify actual counts/odds, and it opens up possibilities with persistent/cross game progress.
There's a pretty stark divide between people willing to explore the space and those who are adamantly opposed to blockchain tech. It's not a perfect ecosystem, and there is plenty of room for improvements, but having large companies take the risks of pushing for innovation in it is a good sign of things to come IMO.
Anyways, food for thought, just like !PIZZA
Thank you for this reporting!
!PIZZA !LUV
Smart move one getting tezos a boost… I imagine they must have stroke a interesting deal with Tezos foundation for this to happen.
Have u done the link?
I suspect this has been in the works for a while - back in April of this year they became a corporate validator for Tezos. This is the first public/player facing aspect of that partnership that players can interact with though to my knowledge.
Attempted to do the link, but as a console player I'm locked out of moving forward with it. I imagine there'd be further complications with NFTs on Playstation/Xbox, more so from an economy/digital sales perspective than an access/account one though (Sony would want their cut too!). Hopefully it moves beyond that and to more general requirements rather than specific games.
Have some !PIZZA
I will give it a try later to check it out... if I find anything, will let you know.
Cheers !BEER
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I love Ubisoft for going that path as the first AAA game publisher. ROFL reading the Youtube comments from no-coiners, though. These guys will come around eventually, when they see their friends earning more money with games than they do with a full-time job.