Ubisoft announces NFT platform Quartz and the first game to use it will be Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Ubisoft has announced Ubisoft Quartz, a new platform for players to acquire Digits, the first Non-Fungible Tokens (NTFs) playable in an AAA game and running on energy-efficient technology.
Launching in beta with Ghost Recon Breakpoint on Ubisoft Connect for PC, Digits will be released as part of limited Editions, each composed of a fixed number of cosmetic items.
Digits are “a new way to experience cosmetic items,” which are collectible in-game vehicles, weapons, and pieces of equipment that offer players “unprecedented ways to connect with and enjoy more value from the games they love,” said Ubisoft.
Each Digit is a unique collectible that features its own serial number for others to see in-game, and it also keeps track of current and previous owners. These in-game collectibles provide players the ability to personalize their experience and “complete their missions with style,” and each Digit comes with a certificate of ownership stored on blockchain, a decentralized, community-driven technology independent from Ubisoft. With Digits, items are no longer bound to a player’s inventory since they can be put on sale for other eligible players to acquire on third-party platforms.
This “large-scale experiment” is the next step in Ubisoft’s four-year exploration of blockchain technology through in-house research and development.
“Our long-term efforts led us to understand how blockchain’s decentralized approach could genuinely make players stakeholders of our games, in a way that is also sustainable for our industry, placing back into their hands the value they generate through the time they spend, the items they buy or the content they create online,” said Nicolas Pouard, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab.
“Ubisoft Quartz is the first building block in our ambitious vision for developing a true metaverse. And it can’t come to life without overcoming blockchain’s early-form limitations for gaming, including scalability and energy consumption.”
To operate the first energy-efficient NFTs playable in a AAA game, Ubisoft Quartz leverages Tezos, a blockchain running on a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, which is said to use exceedingly less energy to operate than Proof-of-Work blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
To ensure that players can use Digits to the full extent of their utility, Ubisoft Quartz will only be available to players that meet the following eligibility criteria: play Ghost Recon Breakpoint on Ubisoft Connect for PC, reach at least the XP Level 5 in the game, and be at least 18 years old.
In addition, the number of Digits of a single Edition that a player can own at any time is limited to one.
Ubisoft Quartz will be available in beta starting December 9 at 6PM UTC in the USA, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Australia, and Brazil. The experiment will kick off with three drops of free Digits on December 9, December 12, and December 15 to reward the early adopters among players. Digits can be claimed on the Ubisoft Quartz platform and played within Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Other drops are planned for early 2022, and more details will be shared at a later date.
For more information on Quartz, hit up the official website.