Ubisoft’s first NFT experiment was a dumpster fire

Ubisoft's first experiment with non-fungible tokens (called "Quartz Digits") in Ghost Recon Breakpoint is already winding down just four months after it started. The short saga serves as a prime example of the problems that can arise when a company just throws "the blockchain" into its plans without thinking about why it's doing so.

Ubisoft announced on Twitter on Tuesday that the company has released "our final piece of content" for Ghost Recon Breakpoint after rolling out 11 updates since the game's 2019 launch. While Ubisoft says it will "continue to maintain our servers" for Breakpoint and 2017's Ghost Recon Wildlands for the time being, Breakpoint's relatively limited player base means that online multiplayer support probably won't last that much longer. (Ubisoft will shut down the gameplay servers for battle royale shooter Hyper Scape later this month).

On the Ubisoft Quartz website, the company confirmed that "the last Digit for Ghost Recon Breakpoint was released on 3/17/2022."

"Thank you to all Ghost Recon Breakpoint players who claimed their first Digits! You own a piece of the game and have left your mark [on] its history." Never mind that the Quartz website claimed that being listed on the "owner history" for a Digits NFT would "bring you fame for years to come!"

At the same time, Ubisoft said this is not the end of its NFT plans. "Stay tuned for more updates with features to the platform and future drops coming with other games!"

"At Ubisoft, we continuously learn by trying new things and encourage this attitude in our teams," the company said in a statement provided to Ars. "Being first to take advantage of emerging trends and technology is more than core to Ubisoft’s strategy; it is part of our DNA. Ubisoft Quartz reflects this ambition and represents an incredible opportunity to learn with our community about what decentralization can bring to gaming. As the last Ghost Recon Breakpoint Digit was released on March 17, we will now look to continue our exploration by improving the value proposition of the platform with new projects and features."

A sluggish market

After a big, splashy rollout of Quartz Digits in December, Ubisoft issued four further NFT "drops" for Breakpoint over the past three months. Each was offered in limited quantities and was initially available for free to players who met specific in-game level requirements.

Players who managed to snag a free Digits NFT could then sell the "unique" in-game item on two specific partner NFT marketplaces: Objkt and Rarible. But the secondhand market for the in-game items wasn't exactly robust; in the nearly 120 days since Ubisoft first rolled out Digits, an Ars analysis shows just 96 successful sales from among the thousands of Digits minted by Ubisoft.

Ubisoft's first free Digits NFT drop as it appeared pre-launch in December.

Interestingly, Objkt seems to have quietly halted trading on all Ubisoft Digits months ago without much notice from the outside world. The last of the 26 total Digit sales on Objkt—a pair of Wolf Enhanced Pants that sold for 10TZ (then the equivalent of roughly $39)—was recorded on February 5.

There are no current sales listings for Ubisoft Digits on Objkt. And when you look at a listing for a Digit on the Objkt website, you'll see a message reading, "You can't trade this Digit at the moment, please visit quartz.ubisoft.com for more information." (No relevant additional information can be found on that website.) Ubisoft and Objkt representatives have not responded to a request for comment on the matter.

On Rarible, though, the slow drip of Ghost Recon Breakpoint Digit sales continues to this day. As recently as Wednesday morning, someone bought a P320 in-game weapon for 19 XTZ (about $64). We hope the new owner enjoys the purchase while the Breakpoint servers are still up.

What now?

Looking back, you can identify many reasons why Breakpoint's Digit NFTs didn't exactly set the world on fire. For one, the NFTs were initially offered for free, meaning many interested players probably got theirs without having to engage with the secondary market at all.

Each Ubisoft account holder was also limited to one NFT from each distinct Digit collection and needed to jump through some significant in-game hoops to become a valid purchaser. That probably helped limit rampant speculation in the market, but it also put a damper on player interest.

The biggest problem with Breakpoint Digits, though, was that they were some of the most fungible non-fungible tokens around. Yes, every Breakpoint NFT technically had a tiny, unique serial number engraved on its in-game model. And yes, you could trace the sales history of your specific Digit on the Tezos blockchain. At a glance during a game, though, one pair of "unique" Wolf Enhanced Pants looked a lot like any of the other 749 other "unique" copies out there, making them more like traditional in-game DLC than coveted player-specific fashion.

Who will buy all these Breakpoint NFTs now that support for the game is winding down?

More than that, though, the end of Ubisoft's short experiment with Breakpoint NFTs puts the lie to the idea that such NFTs are superior because they are "permanent." Yes, ownership of a Breakpoint Digit will technically live on via the Tezos blockchain even after Ghost Recon Breakpoint's servers are a distant memory. But the already sluggish market for those NFTs is likely to decline to near zero when they can no longer grant even the minor in-game status they once did.

No matter how "decentralized" an in-game NFT marketplace is, the underlying value of those NFTs will always be tied to the game (or games) with which they're compatible. As Ubisoft's announcement yesterday suggests, that value can deteriorate in an instant if and when the owner of a video game decides to stop supporting that game.

Ubisoft could theoretically honor Digits ownership in its other games, letting players take their Wolf Enhanced Pants purchase to still-popular titles like Rainbow Six Siege, for instance. But adding NFT support to those games wouldn't be a trivial process, as it would require a good deal of technical and artistic work to get the art assets and verification servers working properly. While the Quartz website talks up plans for "future drops coming with other games," it is conspicuously silent on the idea of previous Digit drops being usable in other games.

Many NFT and metaverse proponents have also tried to sell the idea that blockchain-based in-game purchases will allow owners to take their items from universe to universe easily. But the idea that other publishers could honor Breakpoint NFT purchases in their own games is extremely unlikely, given the tangle of rights and compatibility issues that would need to be navigated just to offer benefits to a few thousand Digit owners.

In a January interview, two Ubisoft executives said that "gamers don't get what a digital secondary market can bring to them." Given the fate of the secondary market for Breakpoint NFTs, though, gamers seemingly understood the value of that market better than Ubisoft did.