Final yr we first reported on Ubisoft’s third try at making NFTs and gaming work with the creation of Champions Ways: Grimoria Chronicles, a self-described “aggressive turn-based RPG” that might be linked to the blockchain in some trend. It seems that final week Ubisoft quietly launched the sport in full to PC over the weekend, and we will now get the total measure of its NFT integration.

Gameplay in Champions Ways entails creating or buying a group of three NFT collectible figurines to pit them towards others in turn-based battles to climb the PvP leaderboard. In line with reporting from IGN, gamers are given some non permanent collectible figurines, however they’ll finally must both create their very own within the forge or buy some from a market, each of which could be accomplished by spending in-game foreign money or crypto.

It’s {the marketplace} that finally ends up being the place issues arguably go fairly bitter, as gamers look like making an attempt to earn a living off of this factor: Scrolling via the market, we will see that a lot of the figures run about $8 to $15 on common on the time of this writing, however there are those that are asking for simply over $100 for a figurine, whereas the most costly is asking for a whopping $63K, so it will appear that there aren’t any market controls in place.

When approached for touch upon the matter, Ubisoft Paris studio director Francois Bodson likened Champions Ways’ figs to buying and selling playing cards and trotted out the often-repeated recommendations that the blockchain equates to digital merchandise possession.

“Our shared aim is to discover new methods to play alongside bringing extra worth to gamers based mostly on empowerment and possession. Champions Ways affords deep strategic gameplay that includes distinctive in-game property and a number of other thrilling improvements. These embrace tens of millions of procedurally generated collectible figurines, every with distinct stats, property formed instantly by gamers’ decisions, and an open market letting gamers compose their groups on a peer-to-peer foundation – very like a bodily buying and selling card recreation.”

This push into blockchain and NFT gaming – nevertheless quietly – is ready towards the backdrop of extra unhealthy fiscal information for Ubisoft general, as the corporate noticed gross sales for the primary half of the fiscal yr dip by 19% YoY.

The report additionally confirmed that Ubisoft is making an attempt to “[tackle] the dynamics behind the polarized feedback round [the company] in order to guard [its] status and maximize […] recreation’s gross sales,” whereas additionally confirming it shed over 2,000 staff as a part of efforts to chop prices. We’d argue that firing employees over unhealthy management choices in addition to hoping to place out an NFT recreation on the sly isn’t going to assist these efforts.