Oblivious video game giant Ubisoft (UBI.EPA) partners with blockchain distribution platform Ultra to disrupt video game industry

Gaming platform Ultra announced this week they were partnering with video-game giant Ubisoft (UBI.EPA) to disrupt the video game industry by becoming the first major gaming company to bolster its UOS blockchain, a sister branch of EOS.IO.

The EOS.IO platform was developed by the private company block.one and released open source on June 1, 2018. EOS.IO is a blockchain protocol powered by the native cryptocurrency EOS. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. It uses the distributed proof-of-stake consensus protocol, which makes it absolutely perfect for use for industries like video games and esports.

“Since Ubisoft is already a leader in the games industry and shows commitment to probe blockchain as a viable technology for games, we are very excited to be announcing our first cooperation of this kind with them” said Nicolas Gilot, founder and co-CEO of Ultra.

Ubisoft’s game portfolio includes plenty of games you’ve probably played, including  Assassin’s CreedFar CryJust DancePrince of PersiaRaymanRaving Rabbids, and Tom Clancy’s. They’re also the fourth largest publicly traded game company in the Americas and Europe in terms of revenue and market cap, after Activision Blizzard (ATVI.Q)Electronic Arts (EA.Q), and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO.Q).

The word disrupt has been used far too much in media circles, but it hasn’t yet lost its original meaning. Disruption occurs when a new intervening force or idea arrives and rearranges the existing order, which has grown too moribund and decadent to bring about real functional change. Most of the companies using the word disrupt do it without irony, not realizing that they are representatives of the existing order in dire need of rearrangement.

As the number four largest video game company in the world, Ubisoft is a representative of this irony. To their credit they haven’t exactly used the buzzword, but they’re still trying to implement one of the technologies thought to bring this disruptive revolution.

Ultra did, however, say this:

“We’re on a mission to shake up the gaming industry by placing power back into the hands of developers and players. We are paving the way for a first-class game publishing platform, and we couldn’t do it without the support of companies such as Ubisoft,” Gilot said.

disrupt
Source: giphy.com

There’s little doubt that the video game industry is in need of a shakeup. There’s too much power concentrated in the hands of the big name companies listed above (incuding Ubisoft), culminating in shady business practices, terrible labour conditions, and more reliance on existing and successful game franchises and less original content.

Here’s the various layers of the video game industry, and the challenge is to find the place where this “disruptive” technology could be put to best use:

  • Capital and publishing layer: involved in paying for development of new titles and seeking returns through licensing of the titles.
  • Product and talent layer: includes developersdesigners and artists, who may be working under individual contracts or as part of in-house development teams.
  • Production and tools layer: generates content production tools, game development middlewarecustomizable game engines, and production management tools.
  • Distribution layer: or the “publishing” industry, involved in generating and marketing catalogs of games for retail and online distribution.
  • Hardware (or Virtual Machine or Software Platform) layer: or the providers of the underlying platform, which may be console-based, accessed through online media, or accessed through mobile devices such as smartphones. This layer now includes network infrastructure and non-hardware platforms such as virtual machines (e.g. Java or Flash), or software platforms such as browsers or even further Facebook, etc.
  • End-users layer: or the users/players of the games

The technology could be best leveraged to disrupt the second layer, tracking the contribution of each individual developer, designer and artist to ensure that IP is protected, especially as it pertains to contract negotiations. But it isn’t. Instead, it’s going to be used for the third layer, where instead it will be used to reinforce the control these companies have over the industry. These transactions will include in game asset creation, ownership transfers between players, or payment.

“Our team at the Strategic Innovation Lab strongly believes that all blockchain use cases that bring value to players are important to support, and Ultra offers a solution that does just that. During this first trial period of collaboration, we hope to help them in bringing it to a larger scale and experiment with the possibilities this opens up for the industry,” said Nicolas Pouard, Ubisoft’s blockchain initiative director.

This program lives and dies on its block producers, and if the company is incapable of sourcing quality producers, able to vote with their coins on a semi-regular basis, then the block won’t close enough and transactions won’t happen with enough alacrity. It would take a bloc of dedicated users to disrupt the blockchain by simply voting for an inadequate ledger.

There’s still room for bottom-up protest and disruption. The infrastructure will be provided by block producers, who will be called upon to validate transactions happening on Ultra’s blockchain. Therefore, it’s crucial for Ultra to get the right people with the most interest, and also the technological capabilities to help grow the ecosystem, on top of their formal technical validation tasks.

There are ways to grind a blockchain to a halt and this is the true promise of the technology. It facilitates a meritocracy in many ways. Those who work hardest and know more have the most power, and because most of the information about how to use the technology is on the internet, and not yet hidden behind large university gatekeeper machines, it’s still largely divorced from the constraints of money and power.

Now that’s disruptive.

Here’s another company using blockchain to bolster their video game hopes.

—Joseph Morton

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