Ghost Recon Breakpoint Will No Longer Update, But Ubisoft Isn’t Giving Up NFTs

Ubisoft puts Ghost Recon Breakpoint in maintenance mode and the game will no longer be updated. What about in-game items purchased by NFT-savvy investors? They’re arguably losing value, but Ubisoft is still planning NFTs in other games.

At the end of last year, Ubisoft indicated its interest in NFTs: the Breton studio launched its dedicated Quartz platform and initiated an experiment backed by Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The developer offered for sale a series of “Digits”, unique cosmetic items each having a serial number authenticated using an NFT (a non-fungible token based on blockchain technologies). In other words, the purchasers of these “Digits” can take advantage of a form of ownership over the object, allowing them in particular to market it – in particular to resell them to other collectors in the hope of a capital gain.

Lack of luck for these buyers, Ubisoft announcement Switch Ghost Recon Breakpoint to “maintenance” mode. For the time being, the game remains playable but will no longer be updated – and very often, a game that vegetates is doomed to wither.
So what about NFT owners? Ubisoft assures them that they “own a portion of the game” (and indeed, they remain “owners” of their object) and that they “will thus leave their mark in the history of the game”… which obviously does not no more future. Some imagine that objects backed by NFTs could have a second life in other games, but at this time, Ubisoft does not communicate on such an option. And concretely, it is doubtful that in the future the objects concerned gain enormously in value or that the owners will be able to easily find buyers likely to redeem them. In other words, the investment may not be as profitable as initially hoped.

And this is undoubtedly the question that Ubisoft’s “experimentation” raises here. By launching the marketing of these NFTs in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the Breton group was necessarily aware of the state of the game – not very popular with players and with an uncertain future. The group may have hoped that the title would find a second wind thanks to NFTs (it was perhaps a somewhat risky ambition in view of the aversion of players for NFTs), but above all with the risk of demonstrating for example that the sustainability of NFTs is an illusion. Buyers are certainly still theoretically owners of their object, but the interest is limited if the game that houses it disappears.

A mishap that does not seem to put off Ubisoft. On its Quartz platform, the developer invites the curious to remain vigilant while waiting for future feature updates on the platform and new drops (new distributions of “Digits”) in the context of other games. In view of the context, we will be curious to discover how the studio intends to convince potential future buyers to invest in the next “drops” of Quartz.