Ubisoft is no longer creating new content for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the company announced Tuesday. The game gained some notoriety for its heavily criticized Digits NFTs from Ubisoft’s Quartz platform, and the end of content creation means that there won’t be any new NFTs for the game, according to Ubisoft’s announcement tweet.
“The last four months marked the release of our final piece of content: the brand new Operation Motherland mode, tons of new items including 20th anniversary iconic outfits and Quartz items for Ghost Recon Breakpoint,” Ubisoft said. “We will continue to maintain our servers for both Ghost Recon Wildlands and Ghost Recon Breakpoint and we truly hope you will continue to enjoy the game and have fun playing in solo or co-op with your friends.”
Ubisoft thanked players who had claimed a Ghost Recon Breakpoint NFT on the game’s Quartz website — and promised more NFT drops in the future. “You own a piece of the game and have left your mark in its history,” Ubisoft said. “As the last Digit for Ghost Recon Breakpoint was released on 3/17/2022, stay tuned for more updates with features to the platform and future drops coming with other games!”
“At Ubisoft, we continuously learn by trying new things and encourage this attitude in our teams,” Ubisoft spokesperson Jessica Roache said in a statement to The Verge. “Being first to take advantage of emerging trends and technology is more than core to Ubisoft’s strategy, it is part of our DNA. Ubisoft Quartz reflects this ambition and represents an incredible opportunity to learn with our community about what decentralization can bring to gaming. As the last Ghost Recon Breakpoint Digit was released on March 17, we will now look to continue our exploration by improving the value proposition of the platform with new projects and features.”
There are no new NFTs available, according to the Quartz website, though you can still browse resale marketplaces on Objkt and Rarible. It’s unclear if the Ghost Recon Breakpoint NFTs will be transferable to future games in some way — though, as far as I know, Ubisoft has never promised this would be the case.
“That is one of the many potential possibilities made possible thanks to blockchain technology,” Roache said in an email after we first published this article. I asked directly if Ubisoft can confirm it will let players who bought Digits transfer them to other games at some point, but Roache said the company had nothing to add.
If they don’t transfer, that means people who may have paid a good amount of money for one of the digital collectibles are stuck owning it in just one game that is no longer getting new content from the developer — much like what happens with more traditional virtual gaming gear when a game shuts down. That might sting for those who picked up an NFT at a high price; I saw that one Digit was purchased in late March on Rarible for 100 Tezos, which is currently equivalent to about $330.
People who hold NFTs for the recently shut down Formula 1 NFT racing game F1 Delta Time, one of which was valued at about $265,000 at auction last year, are perhaps in a worse position since the game has been shut down entirely. However, the developer of that game has laid out a few options for current NFT holders, including, in some cases, the ability to swap the NFTs for “proxy assets” that can be used to “obtain NFTs for products across the REVV Motorsport ecosystem” in the future.
According to a Kotaku report about a new Ghost Recon, Ubisoft’s Quartz team has “gone mostly quiet internally,” though a spokesperson told the publication that Ubisoft will “have more to share regarding Ubisoft Quartz at a later date.” Kotaku also observed that Ubisoft is currently hiring for blockchain-related jobs.
Update April 6th, 5:43PM ET: Added new information from Ubisoft.
Correction April 6th, 5:43PM ET: Ubisoft offered the NFTs for free — players did not buy them directly from the company. We regret the error.