Games company Ubisoft is finally readying the launch of its first web3 game, Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles on October 23. It will release it on the specialist gaming blockchain Oasys. Ubisoft is one of the blockchain’s validators alongside SEGA, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, Wemix, Mythical and others. Ubisoft has been a validator on several blockchains.
In the run up to the game’s release, last year Ubisoft launched a 10,000 profile picture NFT collection, The Warlords, followed by a 75,000 piece Champion Mint this July.
One of Ubisoft’s first blockchain collectibles in 2020, Rabbids, aimed to raise money for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and preceded the NFT boom. It followed that with an NFT blockchain fantasy football game in conjunction with Sorare.
By the end of 2021, the NFT boom was in full swing, garnering fans and many cynics amongst the mainstream gaming community. Ubisoft launched Quartz, a new offering of NFTs for Ubisoft games, starting with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint game. Quartz enabled personalization of player characters. Despite Ubisoft going out of its way to avoid the general NFT speculation and keeping a focus on gamers, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative.
We believe the Quartz concept will be on full display in the new web3 game.
Meanwhile, Oasys is based in Singapore but has its roots in Japan. It recently attracted investment from SBI Holdings. While its validators are spread around the world, a large proportion are Japanese including Softbank, Astar, KDDI, Rakuten, double jump tokyo and Gumi, apart from the games companies mentioned.
Ubisoft as a company is also the subject of speculation, with rumors that the founders and Tencent might take it private.
