In the weeks since Ubisoft rolled out non-fungible tokens in one of its video video games, critics—namely those here at Ars Technica—possess shot encourage with questions about their motive. While Ars is aloof looking out ahead to a formal response to our December questions, the closest we’re at risk of uncover comes from a Thursday interview with Ubisoft executives that integrated a courageous assertion that gamers’ “resistance” to NFTs is “primarily based on misunderstanding.” (We hope Ubisoft just isn’t very announcing that to any individual who has read Ars’ prolonged files to NFTs.)

In the interview, performed by Australian tech living Finder, two Ubisoft executives (Didier Genevois, head of Ubi’s blockchain crew, and Nicolas Pouard, lead on Ubi’s “Quartz” and “Digits” NFT systems) fail to define how an on-line game’s NFT implementation differs on a gameplay foundation from current digital rights management (DRM) solutions, namely those baked into storefronts worship Steam and Ubisoft Connect.

When pressed without lengthen on what support a player would perchance well inquire of from enticing with Ubisoft Digits, Pouard first acknowledged that “gamers create not uncover what a digital secondary market can lift to them.” At closing, Pouard answered with one possible support: “the chance to resell their items when they’re accomplished with them or they’re accomplished playing the game itself.”

Finder’s reporter then requested whether Ubisoft game license purchases would perchance well in some unspecified time in the future be handled worship NFTs so as that buyers can freely promote and alternate the video games they’ve purchased fairly than getting them locked of their Ubisoft Connect accounts. Pouard implied that this kind of thing would perchance well happen in some unspecified time in the future. “That’s part of the use case we can stumble on, but it undoubtedly’s not the level of curiosity at the present time,”  he acknowledged.

A enviornment of untamed contrasts

Pouard moreover indicated that the larger diagram of NFT gross sales is connecting them to other marketplaces. He responded to a inquire of about whether “play-to-invent” schemes would perchance well appear in Ubisoft video games, with NFT acquisition as an endpoint, by announcing, “Along side a proper-world mark reward would perchance well moreover merely be the next addition on high of the complete mark a game already provides.” (Pouard in no manner explained how such NFTs or rewards will be doled out, nor what roughly regulatory sizzling water his crew would perchance well land in for promoting this kind of plot.)

In one head-spinning quote, Pouard all but screamed Ubisoft’s intent for making cash from a linked metaverse of some model:

The curiosity in decentralization for a centralized company worship Ubisoft is to delivery the gates of our video games and to invent them bigger by sharing [a stake] with our gamers. To assassinate current experiences which would perchance well be on high of what is in every game to this level. It be a brand current manner to search what a game would perchance well presumably be. I create not are looking out for to enter numbers, but owning a share of a big ecosystem would perchance well moreover merely be a lot extra attention-grabbing than merely owning a game at the present time. I’m sorry, as I comprehend or not it is imprecise appropriate now, as this roughly thought would not in reality exist yet [in gaming]. But we search that the ecosystem for a game will seemingly be a lot, a lot bigger than what a game is at the present time by manner of mark creation for all people.

The interview is a enviornment of untamed contrasts. On the one hand, Pouard acknowledged Ubisoft customers would possess considered through any are attempting and conceal the NFT-primarily based nature of its Digits gadget. “We need to be clear on what we’re doing,” he acknowledged.

But when requested about customers’ destructive response to Ubisoft Digits, Pouard pivoted to condescension and obfuscation. After announcing NFTs are “not a straightforward thought to procure,” he boldly asserted that “share by share, the puzzle will seemingly be revealed and understood by our gamers.”

Worse, when describing the object-resale possible of Ubisoft Digits, Pouard got dazzling blunt. “So, or not it is in reality for [paying Ubisoft customers]. It be in reality priceless. But they invent not uncover it for now,” he acknowledged.

A few questions later, Pouard went encourage to heaping reward on gamers, telling Finder, “Gamers are repeatedly appropriate. Which potential of they’re our gamers, and we love them. And in addition they’re repeatedly appropriate.”