Quartz, the new nonfungible token (NFT) concept by Ubisoft Entertainment SA, was announced in a short YouTube video and is encountering intense opposition from the gaming community as the video presently has 1,400 likes and 37,000 dislikes
Quartz Faces Intense opposition from the gaming community
Quartz, the new nonfungible token (NFT) concept by Ubisoft Entertainment SA, is encountering intense opposition from the gaming community.
On December 8, Ubisoft announced the Beta launch of Quartz in a short YouTube video that had 214,721 views as of this writing.
The initiative seeks to integrate NFTs and blockchain technology into existing Triple-A gaming titles, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint has been announced as the first game to do so.
Quartz is described in the movie as a platform that allows gamers to “gather the first playable and energy-efficient Ubisoft NFTs,” known as “Digits.”
The video introducing Quartz has 1,400 likes and 37,000 dislikes on Youtube
YouTube recently modified its policy to hide the number of dislikes a video receives on the platform, however, Google Chrome addons may still see the number. The video presently has 1,400 likes and 37,000 dislikes, resulting in a dislike ratio of nearly 96 percent when utilizing an extension.
One of the most popular comments on the video, from user “OperatorDrewski,” has 2,600 likes and zero dislikes, and slams Ubisoft’s NFT initiative as a money grab rather than an improvement to the entire gaming experience:
“To me, this is a blatant signal that you’re just milking the Ghost Recon franchise for literally every cent while putting in minimal effort into the actual game itself. Not playing a GR game in the future if there’s this level of degeneracy in the team.”
“You took a good franchise and turned it into a laughingstock,” they continued.
This viewpoint appears to be shared by a sizable portion of the community, with fans on Twitter lash out at the company in response to its recent revelation, threatening to delete the company’s titles and boycott Ubisoft entirely.
Because of my personal view of NFTs and not because of the environmemt entirely, I will now proceed to uninstall anything related to you right now and cease further purchases of your games.
That is all. For people that dislike Current Ubi’s marketing, just stop buying.— Skyeeeely – Lazy VStreamer Cat (@Sukaaaily) December 7, 2021
A post from Dec. 8 on Reddit’s r/gaming page demonstrates a coordinated campaign to boycott the new NFT initiative. “Do not support “Quartz,” the new NFT Ubisoft store,” by “u/WolverineKuzuri93,” has 2,500 comments and a 93 percent upvote ratio with more than 13,400 upvotes.
The Redditor brings up points that are similar to those raised by the top YouTube commentator, emphasizing that:
“We have to stand against this practice. […] This is just another way to nickel and dime players with cosmetics rather than focusing on making quality products with depth. We have to let companies know this is anti-consumer.”
“I’m not completely opposed to utilizing an NFT-style structure for digital games. For example, instead of merely a license, you can truly own your digital copy and sell it to another user’s account. That is, in fact, the digital gaming future. What I don’t like about Ubisoft’s approach to in-game stuff, “they stated.
NFTs have sparked a backlash among gamers
This isn’t the first time a major corporation has been chastised for considering or entering the field of NFTs. Last month, Cointelegraph revealed that Discord, a community chat app, was forced to backtrack on its Ethereum-based NFT integration plans amid a backlash from the gaming community.
Citron teased his company’s ambitions with an image of a beta feature that showed Ethereum NFT wallet compatibility, but he was quickly bombarded with hundreds of comments urging him to abandon the plans, as well as customers threatening to cancel their paid Nitro memberships.
Unlike in the case of Ubisoft, where the community is irritated by what they perceive to be a cash grab, crypto-skeptics on Discord believe NFTs is a Ponzi scheme that harms the environment due to the energy necessary to mine cryptocurrency.
