Ubisoft Might Be the First Major Games Company to Geek Out Over Blockchain

Published at: Jan. 2, 2020

It’s already well-theorized that it’s not cryptocurrency or decentralized finance apps, but gaming that will actually drive blockchain use cases in the real world.

While this has moved many smaller development companies and hobbyist programmers to release their own blockchain-driven games, distributed ledger technology’s reception among mainstay gaming companies has so far largely been neutral.

A new partnership between old players

But that’s about to change in the wake of Ubisoft’s partnership with Ultra, a DLT-driven gaming platform that might be fairly described as Steam on the blockchain. Users can earn digital currency, buy games, and resell them.

Ubisoft is the mainstream gaming giant responsible for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Far Cry, and a whole range of other commercial hits. The company knows how to make and market games that people actually play, and they know how to do it exceptionally well.

The professional, at-scale approach to game development within a blockchain paradigm isn’t exactly common. Most blockchain games nowadays are by passion project developers or small-scale commercial enterprises. Perhaps due to the technology’s association with regulatory uncertainty, game developer heavyweights are mostly keeping blockchain at arm’s length. Except now Ubisoft is going to become a block producer on Ultra’s associated UOS blockchain.

Meaning for the future

This move is purportedly about lending UOS more trust since Ubisoft is such an established company, and its hardware is now part of the ecosystem that approves transactions in UOS tokens that are confirmed by other block producers. It is also not too great a stretch of the imagination to hypothesize that Ubisoft could begin developing blockchain-dependent games for the Ultra platform.

But that’s raw speculation for now. Until then, Ubisoft is lending its hardware and credibility in support of a new crypto gaming project.

Tags
Related Posts
Gaming giant Ubisoft to become corporate baker on Tezos network
Ubisoft, the video game studio behind popular titles such as Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia and the Tom Clancy series, will become a corporate Tezos baker, or validator node. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Ubisoft announced its partnership with Tezos-backed Nomadic Labs that will see the latter creating a validator node on the Tezos network. @Ubisoft is exploring #Tezos technology by becoming a corporate baker. Welcome to the ecosystem! Read the announcement: https://t.co/ZM1IzBTVCM#blockchain #DigitalTransformation #crypto #Ubisoft pic.twitter.com/6wKCQIFAOJ — Nomadic Labs (@LabosNomades) April 20, 2021 As a Tezos baker, Ubisoft via its Strategic Innovation Lab will join the group of …
Blockchain / April 20, 2021
Gaming Industry Use of Blockchain May Lead to Mass Adoption
Blockchain technology has recently become a phenomenon in various areas of the economy, driving innovation, fostering growth and bringing added value. Among the most noteworthy of these sectors is the gaming industry. Gaming is a use case that drives true adoption of blockchain technology by taking the incentive for the user from pure speculation to transactions on a blockchain platform. This drives innovation in development as well as consumer adoption. The first true blockchain gaming application was Cryptokitties. While the platform itself is a technology demonstrator for collectible items, it quickly rose to prominence as the application representing the majority …
Adoption / July 26, 2020
YGG-backed Oasys blockchain hopes to take P2E gaming mainstream
The team behind the new gaming-focused proof-of-stake blockchain Oasys say that it’s been designed to increase mainstream play-to-earn (P2E) adoption. The Singapore-based firm (Oasys PTE. LTD) behind the new chain touts its scalability, eco-friendly PoS blockchain, “zero gas fee experience” and the portability of digital assets between different projects built on the blockchain as key drawcards for developers and users. The founding team includes a host of names from top crypto and gaming firms including Bandai Namco Research president and CEO Hajime Nakatani, Sega Corporation co-COO Shuji Utsumi, double.jump.tokyo CEO Hironobu Ueno, Thirdverse CEO Hironao Kunimitsu and Yield Guild Games …
Blockchain / Feb. 17, 2022
Ethereum’s Hearthstone Rival Sets Volume Record After Blizzard Scandal
Ethereum (ETH) based trading card game Gods Unchained has far outstripped CryptoKitties by volume after a censorship scandal involving game-developer Blizzard. As blockchain research platform Coin Metrics noted on Nov. 12, the past month has seen activity explode for the game, with interest dwarfing that of CryptoKitties at its 2017 peak. Data: Gods Unchained volume five times higher In terms of daily transfers of its non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Gods Unchained was recording almost 500,000 such transfers per day at the end of last week. By contrast, even at the height of the CryptoKitties craze in late 2017, transfers there totaled …
Blockchain / Nov. 13, 2019
Ethereum Merge a 'few months after' June: Dev clears up what’s going on
The long-awaited Ethereum Merge is set for yet another delay, with developers working on the upgrade estimating a completion time a “few months after” June. Owing to the success of testing, there was a general expectation the Merge would go through mid year, however the latest setback is unsurprising given that Proof of Stake has been delayed constantly ever since it was first proposed. That said, the signs are promising that the Ethereum mainnet will actually merge with the beacon chain to become a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network this year. For real. Ethereum developer Tim Beiko provided the updated timeline via …
Blockchain / April 14, 2022