Ubisoft's Quartz NFT test in Ghost Recon Breakpoint wound down after four months

Ars Technica reported in April 2022 that Ubisoft's first NFT experiment, Quartz Digits in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, was already winding down four months after a splashy December 2021 rollout. Ubisoft said it had released its final content for the game, and that the last Digit had come out on 17 March 2022. It added that it would keep exploring NFTs with 'future drops coming with other games'.

After the first release, Ubisoft issued four more limited drops over three months, initially free to players who met level requirements. Players could resell them on two partner marketplaces, Objkt and Rarible. Ars counted just 96 successful sales among thousands of Digits in nearly 120 days. Objkt appeared to have quietly halted trading on Ubisoft Digits months earlier, showing a message that the Digit could not be traded and pointing to the Quartz site, where no further information appeared.

Ars argued that the Digits were some of the most fungible non-fungible tokens around: each had a tiny serial number, but one pair of 'unique' Wolf Enhanced Pants looked like the other 749 copies in the game. Free first drops, one-per-account limits and in-game hoops also damped interest. In a January interview two Ubisoft executives had said 'gamers don't get what a digital secondary market can bring to them'.

Only 96 resales among thousands minted in about 120 days, per Ars Technica's analysis; no revenue figure was published.

The items were free at first and capped at one per account, so many players never needed a secondary market.

Each Digit looked nearly identical in play, so they acted more like ordinary DLC than coveted unique items.

Their value depended on a game whose support was ending, and Ubisoft gave no plan for use in other games.

One partner marketplace, Objkt, stopped trading Ubisoft Digits without notice.

Adding a blockchain to a game without a clear reason produces items that look like ordinary DLC; a market tied to one game dies when its support ends.

Ubisoft said it would keep maintaining Breakpoint and Wildlands servers for now but would shut down Hyper Scape's gameplay servers later in April 2022. It said it would continue exploring NFTs by improving the value proposition of the Quartz platform with new projects and features.