Ubisoft announced on April 5th that Ghost Recon Breakpoint was entering maintenance mode. Breakpoint could longer get DLC or expansions and servers remained online so the game could be played and monetized. Breakpoint was the first game to use Ubisoft’s failed Quartz NFTs which are effectively in-game cosmetics that can be re-sold.
With Quartz NFTs, Ubisoft has injected even more uncertainty into live games, a segment that’s already plagued by doubts. There’s never any guarantee that a game will be successful, and that goes double for a live game. Adding NFTs to the mix only complicates the structure of the game itself, which has be built around an economy to sustain the monetization method and adds further risk to a game project.
Live service titles are some of the most lucrative games on the market, but it’s also an unforgiving and brutal segment that will quickly punish and squeeze out failures. In-game NFTs only work in live games; the game itself has to be online for the NFTs to have any sort of value (for example, Ghost Recon helmets became worthless when Breakpoint went offline).
Once a game goes offline, gamers would effectively be trying to sell something whose value was never clearly stated to begin with in a game that is no longer playable. So the “collectible” isn’t actually usable or even visible in the game. NFTs are an extension of a live game’s typical monetization models (microtransaction, DLC, expansions, etc.) and thus are dependent on the very same pillars of operation.
Ubisoft’s NFTs need to be designed around a live game and can’t be an afterthought. That won’t work. This is clearly shown in the fact that no one is buying the Quartz NFTs, and the value of these NFTs plummet as the speculative market reacts to news and events like a Breakpoint server shutdown.
(All information was provided by TweakTown)