Ubisoft is reportedly giving out NFTs to its developers

Ubisoft has reportedly begun handing out NFTs to its developers in an effort to calm concerns about the controversial digital items.

According to Kotaku, during a workshop designed to address the fears of sceptical employees, the published “started giving out special NFTs to some members of the Ghost Recon team to “celebrate” the series’ 20th anniversary.”

Ubisoft has recently defended NFTs, with an executive claiming that players “don’t get it”.

In an interview with Australian financial comparison site Finder, Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab VP Nicolas Pouard defended the publisher’s plans to add NFTs to its games, despite huge player backlash.

“Well, it was a reaction we were expecting,” Pouard said of the large negative response to its Quartz NFT system. “We know it’s not an easy concept to grasp.

Pouard continued to imply throughout the interview that the player backlash was due to their inability to understand the benefits of NFTs, rather than any legitimate concerns about the scheme.

“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them,” Pouard said. “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.

According to an earlier report from Kotaku, developers at Ubisoft are extremely unhappy with the direction the company is going.

Kotaku claims to have been shown messages posted on Ubisoft’s internal social media hub, MANA, in which staff are showing confusion and disappointment over the recent announcement of the Ubisoft Quartz platform.

One developer confused by the plans reportedly wrote: “I still don’t really understand the ‘problem’ being solved here. Is it really worth the (extremely) negative publicity this will cause?”

Another staff member not in favour of the platform added: “How can you look at private property, speculation, artificial scarcity, and egoism, then say ‘yes, this is good, I want that, let’s put it in art’?”

Further reading

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Ubisoft’s NFT announcement gets more than 95% dislikes on YouTube

The Ubisoft Quartz platform has been met with almost universal displeasure

Quartz has been met with overwhelming backlash from players, with the announce trailer on the official Ubisoft North America YouTube channel receiving more than 95% dislikes.