If you’re an avid gamer and love Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy series, you’re in for a treat. Starting with their latest release, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Ubisoft has now officially incorporated NFTs into their titles, making them the first major mainstream gaming studio to do so.

Ubisoft, in partnership with the popular blockchain platform Tezos, has revealed the launch of its new platform, labelled Ubisoft Quartz – a platform that allows gamers to earn and buy exclusive in-game items in the form of NFTs, as recorded on the Tezos blockchain. If you’re a resident of countries United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Australia or Brazil, you will get the opportunity to be a part of the Ubisoft Quartz Platform (Beta release), as early as the 9th of December. Us Indians, unfortunately, will have to wait a little bit longer, as there is no official timeline available for an Indian release as of now. 

Nicolas Pouard, Vice President of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab stated “Ubisoft Quartz is the first building block in our ambitious vision for developing a true metaverse. And It can’t come to life without overcoming blockchain’s early form limitations for gaming, including scalability and energy consumption” 

This concern for energy consumption/scalability is perhaps why Ubisoft has partnered with Tezos, instead of the more popular Ethereum to release its NFTs. 

This highly welcomed news comes as no surprise to long-term NFT enthusiasts and Ubisoft fans, for they were the first companies to experiment with NFTs way back in 2019. Along with a Minecraft like prototype game that Ubisoft had built titled “HashCraft”, Ubisoft was also instrumental in the success of many NFT projects like Axie Infinity, NBA Top Shot, and Axie Infinity through its Entrepreneurs Lab Accelerator Program. 

Other popular gaming studios are taking notice as well, like Square Enix and Electronic Arts planning to incorporate NFTs to varying extents on their existing business strategies. EA CEO Andrew Wilson described NFTs as “an important part of the future of our industry on a go-forward basis”.