So much for Ubisoft putting its ideas for NFTs to rest. A year after it seemed like the French publisher had all given up on its NFT aspirations, it appears it’s all-in again.
Fresh off the successful launch of Assassin’s Creed Mirage – yes, it isn’t as good as expected but it was an excellent throwback, nonetheless – it has entered into new partnerships (yes, plural) with multiple key players in the Web3 industry: Immutable, a blockchain gaming platform, and Animoca Brands, a major player in advancing digital property rights in gaming and the open metaverse.
Ubisoft’s recent partnership, in particular, sees Animoca Brands collaborate with its Strategic Innovation Lab to support its Web3 initiatives on Animoca Brands’ flagship membership project, the Mocaverse. This will focus on one particular game, Champions Tactics Grimoria Chronicles, a new experimental PvP Tactical RPG set in, you guessed it, Grimoria, a mythical world where players wage tactical war against each other.
The goal is to eventually include the game into the Mocaverse’s interoperable meta experience that spans Animca Brands’ extensive network of portfolio companies. To be more specific, Champions Tactics Grimoria Chronicles will integrate into Mocaverse’s Web3 Frequent Player Program, highlighting its position as a key feature of the Mocaverse.
Yat Siu, the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, expressed enthusiasm about its partnership with a mainstream gaming company like Ubisoft, highlighting the company’s commitment to introducing users to the Web3 experience through gaming, culture, and entertainment. Nicolas Pouard, VP of the Strategic Innovation Lab at Ubisoft, also shared his excitement about joining the Mocaverse program, emphasizing the potential of Animoca Brands’ consumer-facing initiatives.
We are pleased to announce our partnership with @Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab to amplify their #web3 initiatives through our flagship membership project @MocaverseNFT. pic.twitter.com/iO7zitod9m
— Animoca Brands (@animocabrands) November 21, 2023
Ideally, we’d love to say that this collaboration represents a significant step in expanding the reach and capabilities of Web3 in the gaming industry, except, Ubisoft doesn’t exactly have the best history with NFTs and Web3, in general. It has done everything from introducing numbered helmets in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint to introducing Assassin’s Creed-themed “Smart Collectibles” earlier this year, among others.
However, these ventures with Immutable and Animoca Brands aren’t just mere accessories to existing titles – they’re full-on production titles. In a way, they are massive leaps, but it remains to be seen if they’re more of a reach or an actual step forward.
Maybe the key takeaway with the Immutable and Animoca Brands deals is what they mean for Quartz, Ubisoft’s own NFT platform. The initiative died as soon as it was birthed. Pouard only made things worse in a later statement when he blamed gamers for not understanding how NFTs work. Ubisoft would later cancel anything remotely related to Quartz for its mainstream titles and it has been on the backburner since. Between these two deals and the previous partnership with Integrated Reality Labs, Ubisoft’s NFT path has become somewhat clear: work with external partners, perhaps to minimize the risk to itself and its established properties.
Of course, given how averse the video game industry is to Web3, Ubisoft has the tall task of convincing audiences that this is somehow different from their previous attempts (it’s probably not).
Two years ago was a different time for NFTs and everyone was high on them. You could see why it turned naysayers and critics into believers, but it didn’t take long for everything to start crashing down. After dropping to all-time lows in the past two years (and due to the constant bullying of the internet) most video game companies backed off of their initial optimism for Web3. This leaves Ubisoft as one of the few major players that’s still heavily invested in it, for some reason. The best case scenario is we’ll get a good (but not great) game from these partnerships that will somehow convince Ubisoft to make a AAA Web3 game, eventually.
Just don’t ask us what the worst-case scenario is. The internet isn’t exactly a kind place.
