In a move that seems to reflect an increasingly greedy gaming industry trying to sell us things no one wants, Ubisoft has finally released the first-ever PvP blockchain RPG title, Champions Tactics: Grimoria. Chronicles launched in stealth – complete with playable characters – as-NFTs available for purchase through in-game currency or cryptocurrency, as discovered by IGN.
What’s worth noting here is the pricing. The most expensive character at launch is Inquisitor Swift Zealot, which costs a whopping $63,372.19 in cryptocurrency. Other champions (2732 in total) are also available, with others priced in the tens of thousands of dollars ($25,100 for the Glowing Beast), and others under $5,000. These prices and more can be found on the game’s official marketplace page.
Champions Tactics – Launch Trailer – YouTube Watch On
Are you willing to spend (literally) thousands of dollars on video game flexibility? Ubisoft seems to be trying to figure it out, but to Ubisoft’s credit, these multi-thousand dollar NFTs… Manufacturing costs are not even remotely close to what the end user is expected to pay. The outlook for Free-To-Play looks especially bleak considering the gameplay stat boosts that premium players and their premium characters will enjoy in this competitive, PvP-only game.
That being said, other free-to-play games like Counter-Strike 2 have people spending thousands of dollars on in-game items, but unlike “Champions Tactics,” Counter-Strike 2 has no paywalls.・Two-win is not included. It is wise to limit these economic aspects to cosmetics. If “virtual items that cost real money” sounds like NFTs, you’re not wrong. It’s just that AAA and AA games have been doing this without blockchain for over a decade.
While a similar scheme using NFTs might have been more palatable to a larger gaming audience, the excessively high pricing of NFTs, symbolizing the concept of “pay to win” It’s unlikely to attract players from games like Marvel Snap or Hearthstone, which offer PvP. RPG gameplay with no playable characters at a bold price of $63,000.
Perhaps Ubisoft is aware of this and is simply hoping that this is a quiet launch after all and that a few true NFT believers will participate anyway. It likely started development before last year’s NFT market lost 95% of its value, but it still declared the game as part of its NFT initiative in July.
Apart from this game, there are a number of other blockchain/Web3 games built around NFTs, and there is considerable diversity in terms of genre. A live tally of the top 50 earners is also kept on PlayToEarn.com. However, the general business model is similar and unless you are a true NFT enthusiast, there is not much reason to work on these titles compared to traditional F2P games.
Although these F2P games often have business models similar to gambling (including Counter-Strike 2), these F2P games often involve items of highly volatile monetary value (usually nothing, but in some cases thousands of Buy a key to open a box that yields something), or at least have a larger business model. In many cases, there is more room for profit.
