In an interview about NFTs, a Ubisoft Executive claimed that gamers don’t get the concept of NFTs and what they can do. The response to this statement has been a negative one and led to much mockery.
The NFT debate continues to rage on as the non-fungible token craze builds steam and more and more companies and celebrities like John Cena get on board with it. Whatever your feelings on them, their popularity is increasing, and all parties are trying to get involved.
Ubisoft recently announced their ‘Ubisoft Quartz’ scheme and it instantly generated a huge backlash. The feeling is that the company has fallen into familiar traps such as making the same games with very little innovation and a heavy emphasis on microtransactions.
Ubisoft Quartz added more fuel to the fire and comments by a Ubisoft Executive has only made things worse.
Nicolas Pouard is the Blockchain Initiative Director at Ubisoft and in an extraordinary interview with Finder, he explained why he thinks NFTs are a good thing and why gamers need to embrace them.
“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them. For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second just a tool for speculation. But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself.
So, it’s really, for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.”
The interview soon made its way to social media and predictably drew the ire of many gamers. Twitter user The Squishy Stream realized that Ubisoft will actually get a percentage of the profit if you decide to sell an NFT.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
The thing I found staggering from this, that I had previously missed, is that when you resell the NFT that you bought and "own" from Ubisoft they could get a percentage cut.
NFTs are a scam for idiots. https://t.co/35Sw4t4Yqe
— The Squishy Stream (@gamewithsquishy) January 28, 2022
A comment from Mythos condemned Ubisoft’s ignorance and accused the company of being arrogant when it came to knowing the needs and wants of the players.
What is it with game developers and arrogance? In every area, whether that be politics, culture, or finance, they believe they know better than the consumer.
— Mythos (@QuantumDreams1) January 28, 2022
Whereas one user made an amusing comparison between the story and Ubisoft’s mantra for recent open-world games.
https://twitter.com/William_Masso/status/1486912414625013762?s=20&t=8bmEjgb7h6N1PLv8pVY1SQ
There are countless other Tweets expressing an incredible amount of hate for Ubisoft’s NFT philosophy. Ranging from the popular meme of The Simpsons’ Principle Skinner saying the kids are out of touch, to blunt claims that NFTs are stupid.
We are genuinely curious to see how aggressively Ubisoft pushes the idea of NFTs knowing the early response.
