Ubisoft employees slam crypto initiative by Assassin's Creed game maker

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A conflict between Ubisoft Entertainment SA and many of its employees over a plan to adopt crypto technologies in the company’s video games intensified this week. The French publisher, which makes popular titles such as Assassin's Creed, outlined its thinking on the use of blockchain technology in a message to staff on Thursday. The announcement on an internal message board prompted hundreds of negative comments from employees posted for all of their colleagues to read. One person said it was a “deeply embarrassing day” to be an Ubisoft employee.

The company has faced criticism from fans and employees since announcing Ubisoft Quartz, a platform that allowed players of the shooter Ghost Recon to buy and sell certain equipment as nonfungible tokens. The company held a staff meeting in December to defend the plan and has since continued to move ahead despite internal uproar.

In a statement, a Ubisoft spokesperson said the company will “take the encouragement as well as the concerns to heart,” but that it wasn’t pleased the messages had been made public, adding that “sharing confidential information, including from internal forums, is a violation of our employment agreement, and, more importantly, a violation of the trust that team members place in each other to be able to freely express themselves and have candid, productive discussions.”

NFTs, which rely on blockchain technology, are controversial in the video game industry. Some game companies like Ubisoft, seeing a potential for big profits, have experimented heavily with blockchain in their titles. But many fans and game developers are opposed because of the environmental cost of mining cryptocurrencies and the sense that NFTs are full of scams and make games feel less fun