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Ubisoft Boss Tells Employees That NFTs Are Just The Beginning

Wildebeest

Member
You can bet that these guys are going to be buying real yachts with their scam money and not blockchain ledger certified receipts which indicate that you paid money to own a receipt which doesn't give you any real ownership over a low rez jpeg of a yacht.
 
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GeorgPrime

Banned
I for one am happy Ubisoft is nominating themselves as the first company to tank themselves into the ground with this shit.

They're like a dumbass kid who no matter what you tell him, keeps going near to the stove to try and touch the hot plate. Eventually, they'll get their way and learn the fucking hard way.

I hope that shit stings something fucking royal, Ubisoft.

Tell that the companies who are very successful with their NFT games. Ubisoft is just too dumb to use them.

I wish i had invested in Axie in the beginning lol

 
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Griffon

Member
DLCs are annoying, but unlike nft these aren't burning an insane amount of energy with millions of GPUs running nonstop in farms to make it work.
Crypto is an ecological catastrophe. And I can't afford a new GPU because of it.

And it does nothing new, nothing that an in-game real money auction house can't already do for a fraction of the energy cost.
 
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treemk

Banned
You can bet that these guys are going to be buying real yachts with their scam money and not blockchain ledger certified receipts which indicate that you paid money to own a receipt which doesn't give you any real ownership over a low rez jpeg of a yacht.
It seems this backlash is just hate because it's Ubisoft combined with complete ignorance on how NFTs can work.

It's important to remember that the baseline is that Ubisoft and just about every other game company is selling their own fake currency (in this case, Ghost Coins) that you use to buy virtual items that will disappear forever when the servers go down or you get banned.

NFTs at least provide you a way to own your virtual items for real.
 
What successful NFT games?

Can you name even one?

Your link just links to a title that includes NFTs. There's no indication at all that they've garnered any measurable success so far.
He just named one. If you want metrics, they have 2.5m daily players and so far a total trade volume of $3.6b on their auction house. They take a 4.25% commission on each trade, which means they already made ~$150m from fees alone. Game is printing money.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Smart people won't buy NFTs. But smart people know dumb people will pour hundreds of dollars for cosmetic and will invest in NFTs to make money out of whales, thus perpetrating this evil cycle. They are here to stay, I know it you know it.

Pushback is futile but completely necessary. Was not gonna buy any mediocre Ubi games anyway.
 

GeorgPrime

Banned
What successful NFT games?

Can you name even one?

Your link just links to a title that includes NFTs. There's no indication at all that they've garnered any measurable success so far.

When you bought Axie Coins before you would be a millionaire now.

One Axie Coin is worth around 100 Euro.

and thanks to the transaction fees they made around 150.000.000 Profit.

There will be more games like this coming out soon.

Including a Digimon / Pokemone like game and a MMO like game called Valhalla.
 
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Fuz

Banned
the Ubisoft co-founder said the backlash to the Quartz announcement was expected, and likened it to initial public outcry over previous new developments in the games industry like DLC, microtransactions, and loot boxes

He's right. Gamers are idiots.
 

treemk

Banned
Smart people won't buy NFTs. But smart people know dumb people will pour hundreds of dollars for cosmetic and will invest in NFTs to make money out of whales, thus perpetrating this evil cycle. They are here to stay, I know it you know it.

Pushback is futile but completely necessary. Was not gonna buy any mediocre Ubi games anyway.

People and their decisions are more complex than that. First of all, this is about virtual items, being NFTs or not is just a question of how ownership is handled. A smart and highly successful person could spend hundreds a month on virtual items and it could be a trivial amount for them, someone else could spend 1/10 of that and be ruining their life by doing it. Traditional online virtual items are owned by the gaming company and be accessible by you for however long they decide to keep the servers and your account active, can never be sold or traded to recover their cost, you essentially pay to be allowed to access them but never own them. Correctly implemented NFTs are owned by you, cannot be taken from you, and can be sold or traded. While buying virtual items might be a often foolish thing to do, NFTs are a far more fair and consumer friendly way to do it.
 

Wildebeest

Member
It seems this backlash is just hate because it's Ubisoft combined with complete ignorance on how NFTs can work.

It's important to remember that the baseline is that Ubisoft and just about every other game company is selling their own fake currency (in this case, Ghost Coins) that you use to buy virtual items that will disappear forever when the servers go down or you get banned.

NFTs at least provide you a way to own your virtual items for real.
So when the servers go down I can sell the receipt which says I don't really own a gun in game with a unique ten digit serial number, but I did pay money to use it. Amazing stuff.
 

yurinka

Member
DLCs are annoying, but unlike nft these aren't burning an insane amount of energy with millions of GPUs running nonstop in farms to make it work.
Crypto is an ecological catastrophe. And I can't afford a new GPU because of it.

And it does nothing new, nothing that an in-game real money auction house can't already do for a fraction of the energy cost.
The only difference with in-game dlc or real money auction houses is that nfts are an external 2nd hand market, in a controlled and secure environment that doesn't depend on the game developer or the game store, so the ownership survives the server closure of them (in this case, the game server and Steam/PSN/Ubi PC store/etc).

And well, also secures that a portion of the transaction goes to the creators (devs or player who created it, depends on the implementation of each case), so instead of hurting dev's revenue and profits as happens with traditional/physical 2nd hand market, it supports it.

As an additional perk, nfts have an ownership certificate of the previous owner, so there could be additional value related to this as happens with physical 2nd hand products.

Some nfts/cryptocurrencies require a ton of energy, but it isn't the case with the nft type that Ubisoft is using.
 
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Griffon

Member
The only difference between a DLC and an NFT is that you can sell in a 2nd hand market an NFT using a secure and controlled for both sides (the players and the devs) environment, and that the ownership of the NFT would survive the closure of a game and would continue if the game gets revived by the fans or the company. Which doesn't happens with in-game real money auction houses.

Some nfts/cryptocurrencies require a ton of energy, but it isn't the case with the nft type that Ubisoft is using.

Again, an ingame auction house with a login is just as secure and has been so forever (that's how ebay and pretty much everything works).

And If the game cease to exist, you still have nothing at all in the end, NFT or not...
Actual NFTs are just serial CD-Keys on a shared database, you don't own anything and it doesn't contain anything.
 
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Wildebeest

Member
Imagine being able to trade second hand games and expansion packs for games? An impossible dream that could never happen in the past. It might be possible in the future if we close our eyes, stop thinking, and pray to Ubisoft and EA for deliverance.
 

yurinka

Member
Again, an ingame auction house with a login is just as secure and has been so forever (that's how ebay and pretty much everything works).
No, game and store servers never have been as secure as a blockchain.

And If the game cease to exist, you still have nothing at all in the end, NFT or not...
Yes, as happens with non-nft stuff once the game gets shut down, while it's down you won't be able to use the item there.

But if it gets revived by the company or fans, nft will keep your ownership of these items because their ownership isn't stored in the database of the game's server. And for that same reason, it eases (because can be made without it, but it's a pain in the ass for multiple reasons) to reuse a same nft item in multiple games in a Amiibo fashion so even if they shut down the original game you can continue using it in other ones, or (again, can be implemented without nfts too but it's a pain in the ass) to use your game items in multiple versions of the game you may have (PC, consoles, etc).

Actual NFTs are just serial CD-Keys on a shared database, you don't own anything and it doesn't contain anything.
Nfts are basically certificates of ownership for digital items attached to them. And operate within a secure environment that makes sure they are sold following certain rules (like what percentage gets every involved actor from the related 2nd hand transactions).

Imagine being able to trade second hand games and expansion packs for games? An impossible dream that could never happen in the past. It might be possible in the future if we close our eyes, stop thinking, and pray to Ubisoft and EA for deliverance.
Normal games and dlcs could be nfts too, so nothing stops from seeing in the long term nfts being used to have an oficial and controlled 2nd hand market of digital games and dlcs.

Yeah, fuck Ubisoft and every other company trying to monetize how I game. Its absurd.
Well, all game companies monetize how you play, because this is the point of a company. Nfts aren't for that, they are to allow (and monetize it) a digital 2nd hand market of digital items, in this case in-game customization items.

I like how Ubisoft tried every business option but never succeeded, without the assassin's creed formula on every game they would be dead as f. But hey, keep trying to be everything, one day you will be nothing.
Fake news, Ubisoft is the top public gaming company in terms of revenue, way higher in the ranking if you remove from the list platform holders and mobile gaming only companies:

They have many different super successful formulas, like Rainbow Six, Just Dance or Hungry Shark series just to name a few examples.
 
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treemk

Banned
Imagine being able to trade second hand games and expansion packs for games? An impossible dream that could never happen in the past. It might be possible in the future if we close our eyes, stop thinking, and pray to Ubisoft and EA for deliverance.
This is all being led by indie games, eventually the big publishers will have to follow along or be left behind
 

Wildebeest

Member
A key that allows access to a game or dlc could absolutely be traded as an nft
But the nft would not guarantee or deliver it. You would have to depend on Ubisoft or EA guaranteeing the delivery and recognizing the code in their download managers, in my example. And then the code being a nft or not is irrelevant in substance.
 

treemk

Banned
But the nft would not guarantee or deliver it. You would have to depend on Ubisoft or EA guaranteeing the delivery and recognizing the code in their download managers, in my example. And then the code being a nft or not is irrelevant in substance.
It's relevant because it allows you to own it, sell it, and trade it. There are solutions for guaranteeing delivery too, but ultimately indie games will lead the charge here. With success the model will just keep growing. Nfts are the solution to personal digital ownership in a world publishers have rigged so that they own everything.
 

Wildebeest

Member
It's relevant because it allows you to own it, sell it, and trade it. There are solutions for guaranteeing delivery too, but ultimately indie games will lead the charge here. With success the model will just keep growing. Nfts are the solution to personal digital ownership in a world publishers have rigged so that they own everything.
The point is that NFTs are the solution to owning and trading NFTs. You can "jam tomorrow" the question of how games are delivered all you like, but it just isn't there.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Nfts are the solution to personal digital ownership in a world publishers have rigged so that they own everything.

This is pretty silly.. conceptually only works for "unique" things.. not regular games/DLCs. Publishers have zero reason to let you sell games/DLC. Ubisoft is tacking NFTs onto "unique MTX" hoping some huge aftermarket happens (where those items sell for many times their initial value) they can profit off of. Ubisoft could do the same thing w/o NFTs and just have a "item marketplace" like Diablo 3 did at launch... but.. they want to try to ride some NFT wave and it outsources the "market" which can bite them in the ass less regulation wise.

For the most part "NFT games" are barely even games.. they certainly aren't being marketed to gamers.. aren't being played by normal gamers. They are being played by people in poor countries while some weird crypto-bros speculatively trade the NFTs generated.

Selling of digital games could be done w/o NFTs.. hell just about everything in gaming related to NFTs could be done w/o them. NFTs provide a buzzword more than anything else.
 
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He just named one. If you want metrics, they have 2.5m daily players and so far a total trade volume of $3.6b on their auction house. They take a 4.25% commission on each trade, which means they already made ~$150m from fees alone. Game is printing money.

Are you for real?

$150m is chicken change compared to the literal $bns of pure profits made in MTXs and DLC on traditional AAA games.

Turning games into a glorified digital asset exchange is absolutely going to be a FAD and is absolutely not the future of gaming. Not to mention the fact that when regulators wake up to this shit, it will be regulated to hell and back in every country without question.
 

treemk

Banned
Turning games into a glorified digital asset exchange is absolutely going to be a FAD and is absolutely not the future of gaming

Already there, blockchain just allows the exchange to go both ways


ehmbsFR.png
 

treemk

Banned
For the most part "NFT games" are barely even games.. they certainly aren't being marketed to gamers.. aren't being played by normal gamers. They are being played by people in poor countries while some weird crypto-bros speculatively trade the NFTs generated.
I remember when this same thought process was commonplace for mobile games. Now the MTX models that started there are running rampant in the games we care about. Same thing will happen with NFTs but this time I think it will be a net positive.
 

treemk

Banned
Do they actually have a way for players to sell these things yet?

I believe so, you have to use a Tezos blockchain compatible wallet. Once it's in your wallet you should be able to do what you want with it. I signed up out of curiosity but I didn't get any of the limited supply nft skins.
 
Already there, blockchain just allows the exchange to go both ways


ehmbsFR.png

A store =/= an exchange. You're being incredibly disingenuous.

The fact that it doesn't allow for two-way transactions means IT IS NOT AN EXCHANGE.

Blockchain enabling two-way transacting turns it into an exchange, which places it squarely in the crosshairs of government financial regulators. Good luck convincing governments your NFT game differs from any other type of exchange and thus should be exempted from strict regulation.

-------------

I must honestly ask, though, why are some of you in this thread so hot for this scammy shit? Unless you have skin in the game and are in these threads trying to persuade us all that NFT gaming is the future so that the clueless mugs you encourage will rush to jump on the bandwagon, pushing up the prices so that your own financial interests in these shitty worthless tokens benefit.

These things have no intrinsic value and so encouraging folks to think of them as the "future of gaming" when they are not functionally impacting the gaming experience in any meaningful way (rather they're an auxiliary feature that stands orthogonal to the action of actually playing games) just seems to me to be borderline irresponsible at best, and at worst an outright insidious ploy to enrich yourselves at the expense of late bandwagon jumpers.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I remember when this same thought process was commonplace for mobile games. Now the MTX models that started there are running rampant in the games we care about. Same thing will happen with NFTs but this time I think it will be a net positive.
I don't think you are really understanding my statement. None of my "thought process" is similar to mobile gaming; I'm not talking about "CaSuaL gAmerS" I'm talking about people not really playing.. well.. games lol

The "games" are being played like jobs; and they even have shit like setups so you can fund/manage other "workers." They aren't being played as games; and it's all a pretty big house of cards at this point.. because.. well.. nobody really knows why the hell there is value lol A huge portion of the "players" are in poor countries.. with people in other countries "managing" them.. most are making a few bucks here or there, which is enough for some teenager in the US to get excited, or a teenager in the Philipines to feed his family.

And just like other crypto, everyone and their mother can't just create a "coin" or generate NFTs and expect there to be value there.. as the market crowds, values go down.

This idea that this ABSOLUTELY will catch on "just like MTX" is bizarre.. it is not being consumed by normal "consumers".. it's being messed around with by people not even really interested in the "Game" aspect. It may not be going anywhere, but what is currently happening with "NFT games" is not suddenly going to infect all of gaming..

As far as what Ubisoft is trying to do? Has little to do with the current NFT game trend.. and nobody has any idea if anyone will give a shit about NFT Ghost Recon pajamas.
 
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treemk

Banned
I don't think you are really understanding my statement. None of my "thought process" is similar to mobile gaming; I'm not talking about "CaSuaL gAmerS" I'm talking about people not really playing.. well.. games lol

The "games" are being played like jobs; and they even have shit like setups so you can fund/manage other "workers." They aren't being played as games; and it's all a pretty big house of cards at this point.. because.. well.. nobody really knows why the hell there is value lol A huge portion of the "players" are in poor countries.. with people in other countries "managing" them.. most are making a few bucks here or there, which is enough for some teenager in the US to get excited, or a teenager in the Philipines to feed his family.

And just like other crypto, everyone and their mother can't just create a "coin" or generate NFTs and expect there to be value there.. as the market crowds, values go down.

This idea that this ABSOLUTELY will catch on "just like MTX" is bizarre.. it is not being consumed by normal "consumers".. it's being messed around with by people not even really interested in the "Game" aspect. It may not be going anywhere, but what is currently happening with "NFT games" is not suddenly going to infect all of gaming..

As far as what Ubisoft is trying to do? Has little to do with the current NFT game trend.. and nobody has any idea if anyone will give a shit about NFT Ghost Recon pajamas.

Well, partly yes because nfts in gaming are not far past the proof of concept stage. But any game with loot, skins, itemization, etc can make use of a blockchain backend. They are definitely shaping up to be games, not "games".


This is one of the best looking ones:

 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Well, partly yes because nfts in gaming are not far past the proof of concept stage. But any game with loot, skins, itemization, etc can make use of a blockchain backend. They are definitely shaping up to be games, not "games".


This is one of the best looking ones:


That does look decent.

But in the end.. if really fun games, that otherwise would have had "loot" anyways.. just mint NFTs for that loot because they can make money on backend deals w/ exchanges.. well.. not much has changed, other than an actual chance to profit off of loot in games.

To your point that's a "net positive" and I agree.. it's just not proven to actually be what's going to happen, as the current NFT game fad is more like "mining crypto by clicking buttons in a game" kinda shit lol

If the best games, the most fun to play, end up with the most lucrative NFTs.. well that'd be a win/win.. because every game is moving towards a sort of loot/exp/leveling kind of play anyways due to MTX (and I personally LOVE it because I love those mechanics) lol

I'm just not convinced it's actually going to catch on; if the game actually "Sells" you the NFT then well they've sold you currency, and are under some strict regulations.. if you "earn" the NFT, well then.... the only money to be made is on backend deals with exchanges.. and unless that takes off, your game might be a flop..

It's just unproven either way; not to mention incredibly unpopular.. and this isn't 2006.. the industry survived the "LOL Horse Armor" fiasco and MTX became commonplace and are now a large portion of how money is made.. but NFTs are something else, so incredibly unpopular.. people investing in them are made fun of/laughed at/memed/etc. And there is a really big chance that NFTs themselves will end up not being particularly lucrative, or could have big bubbles burst.

Crypto is here to stay, but it's likely going to be very few currencies that aren't incredibly volatile.. if every game has NFTs then you've got these thousands of "Currencies" floating around and it all becomes sort of a house of cards IMO.
 
Cue every scummy person who ever tried to make a scam kickstarter or con people into a bad product crawling out of the sewers to jump on the nft train because the only reason they got involved with videogames was to try and sell bullshit
 
NFTs are a fucking joke. There are people who sell NFTs of their kids school drawings for $6000. I feel for the suckers who bought into Bitcoin when it was $60,000 after that guy tweeted about it only for him a few months later tweet about how mining it was destroying the environment and Bitcoin lost 40% of value.
 
Barely anyone will make money on these NFT games because:
  • NFTs have no intrinsic value and they lose ALL value as soon as the game's player base dissolves --- and anyone thinking this isn't inevitable is a dolt. So why would anyone invest real money in a digital item whose value has an inherent sell-by date?
  • For items to have any value to the player communities they have to be made artificially scarce within the game. Now consider a game that makes all its most valuable loot available only to a tiny fraction of players who either grind for it or cough up thousands of dollars, how would you possibly expect such a game to be successful across the largest cross-section of the mainstream gamer marketplace?
The only people who will end up caring about these NFT games are folk who don't actually care about the actual game part of it and are just in it to make money. Once they realise there's little profit to be made they'll jump on the next NFT gaming fad and the latest game will die a slow death.
 

Crew511A

Member
Ok, maybe I'm just old, but I don't understand this at all. 2 questions:

1. How is this different than buying weapon skins or other cosmetics understand the current microtransaction model we all know and hate?

2. How could this be damaging to the economy?
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Ok, maybe I'm just old, but I don't understand this at all. 2 questions:

1. How is this different than buying weapon skins or other cosmetics understand the current microtransaction model we all know and hate?

2. How could this be damaging to the economy?

I'll say it like this, "we" don't really hate MTX. In my opinion paying moderately for optional extras and customizations which hasn't been artificially limited (which doesn't require blockchain btw..) is not a problem as long as the core product we paid for has the expected content intact, so-to-speak. My personal problem with NFT is the slippery slope of gambling, trading, speculations and pay to win in its wake which could ruin games as we know them forever. I mean, I don't have a problem with individual titles with NFT baked in for those with a special interest. But when big companies like Ubisoft goes wide and deep with it, trying to force it onto everyone, weaving it into every game and launcher, it'll be impossible to escape.
 
I feel for the suckers who bought into Bitcoin when it was $60,000 after that guy tweeted about it only for him a few months later tweet about how mining it was destroying the environment and Bitcoin lost 40% of value.
Don't feel sorry for the "suckers", Bitcoin is gonna be worth 5x that amount in a couple of years.
 
I wonder what people will think in the future when looking at history from 1990 to 2022+

We have an energy crisis and people are developing more useless shit that provides 0 benefits to quality of life while costing finite resources.

"We have proof of how people lived for thousands of years but there is this blank where everything went digital. We don't know how they powered these rocks and pieces of glass so most of the history is now lost. Humans had a good run."
 
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