Ubisoft exec: Angry gamers ‘don’t get’ NFTs

polygon.com:

Ubisoft’s executive in charge of the company’s new, and generally despised, NFT endeavor said in an interview that Ubisoft is “accustomed to” such immediately negative responses, and said video game fans “don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them.”

“For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second a tool for speculation,” Nicolas Pouard, who leads Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab, told the Australian product comparison site Finder. “The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them, or they’re finished playing the game itself.”

In December, Ubisoft announced it would get into the business of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a type of digital asset commonly likened to a piece of valuable art. Ubisoft’s NFTs are called Digits, and the publisher said they will “provide players the ability to personalize their experience and complete their missions with style.”

The response from the gaming audience was an instant and constant thumbs-down — literally. A video announcing Digits and their exchange platform, Quartz, was socked with 31,000 dislikes on YouTube, compared to 1,000 likes, and Ubisoft unlisted the video days after posting it. The backlash continued unabated, and included Ubisoft employees who criticized the venture as an exercise in “private property, speculation, artificial scarcity, and egoism.”

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