Ubisoft has released a new arena shooter – without major marketing and new trailers. A special feature could also discourage many potential players.
What kind of game is this? Just two weeks after Ubisoft announced that the arena shooter XDefiant will be discontinued and will no longer allow new players, the publisher has released a new game called “Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E.”.
This is a top-down arena shooter. This means you look down on your character, the map, and your opponents. “Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E.” is a multiplayer game, with modes such as team deathmatch being played.
“Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E.” is essentially the game adaptation of a series adaptation of a game. The arena shooter aims to deepen the universe of the anime series “Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix,” which is itself a series spinoff of “Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon”.
Here you can watch a trailer for Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E.:
Ubisoft relies on controversial technology in the new shooter
What kind of technology does the shooter rely on? “Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E.” relies on blockchain technology. So you can only play the game in early access if you have a so-called “Niji Warrior ID Card”.
This ID card is an NFT that is generated somewhat individually for each player. A total of 10,000 of these NFTs have been distributed for free. No more cards are currently planned. If you want to play “Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E.”, you need to purchase one of these ID cards – that is, an NFT – on an appropriate marketplace.
As with other collectibles, there are also various marketplaces for NFTs where collectors can trade their acquired objects.
To be able to buy such a card, you obviously need a crypto wallet and a cryptocurrency like Ethereum. The cheapest card we saw on such a marketplace was priced at that time at 0.005 Ethereum, which is equivalent to about 13 euros.
Why did gamers hope that this technology had died years ago? In 2021, NFTs and blockchain technology became a new trend in gaming. Many developers saw a lot of potential in NFTs and released games that were based on or utilized this technology.
In the shooter Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Ubisoft relied on NFTs, for example, as a kind of evolution of normal cosmetic items. However, this was not well received by players and there was a huge wave of protest against Ubisoft’s NFTs. One player even spoke of the “day when Ubisoft decided to become completely evil.”
For many players, NFTs signal a way to make even more money from a game than they would with normal cosmetic items – after all, with successful NFTs, a constant trading of digital collectibles would arise. Additionally, NFTs are often expensive energy consumers in their production, as are cryptocurrencies. For this reason, they are considered environmental sinners.
In 2022, the hype around NFTs in gaming then gradually declined. This was also because many games that relied on NFTs and blockchain quickly died, causing players to lose the money invested in NFTs forever. In 2024, there were consequently significantly fewer game announcements involving NFTs.
