Ubisoft Is In 'Research Mode' Regarding Integration Of Web3 And NFTs

The CEO of French gaming giant Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, is possibly retracing the steps following the industry backlash at Quartz, the company's NFT gaming project. He stated that the company is going into "research mode" regarding Web3 and NFT integrations in its games.

In an interview with gamesindustry.biz on Sept. 10, Guillemot appeared to be relinquishing his extremely bullish approach to integrating blockchain technology in its AAA game titles.

Ubisoft executives have been extremely positive towards NFTs and Web3 in the past. In October 2021, the chief financial officer at the French company, Frédérick Duguet, stated that blockchain is a booming industry and the gaming company plans to "be one of the key players here."

"So we are testing ground with some games, and we'll see if they really answer the players' needs. But we are still in research mode, I would say," Guillemot told Gamesindustry.biz. "We probably were not good at saying we are researching. We should have said we were working on it, and when we have something that gives you a real benefit, we'll bring it to you."

The company aimed to integrate NFTs into its games and announced the NFT gaming platform Quartz in December 2021. Players will have to collect Ubisoft game worlds called Digits which were described as "the first NFTs playable in AAA games and running on energy-efficient technology."

However, the comments on the Twitter announcement confirmed that Ubisoft will have a hard time selling the new concepts to its consumer base. Users said they would uninstall everything related to the company and now play another game from Ubisoft.

Following such heavy pushback, CEO Guillemot might be promoting the investment in Quartz back to researching the NFT and Web3 industry.

"We are very much on cloud, on the new generation of voxels, and we're looking at all the Web3 capabilities. We tested a few things recently that are giving us more information on how it can be used and what we should do in the universe of video games," Guillemot told the outlet.