Ubisoft launches a Blood Dragon spin-off featuring Rayman, but it's an NFT game

WTF?! Ubisoft released a new game this week, a spin-off of the excellent Blood Dragon standalone expansion to Far Cry 3. It even features an appearance from Rayman. But why has the company not spent millions promoting what sounds like, at the very least, an interesting title? Probably because it's a Web3 game that requires the purchase of an NFT to play it.

2013's Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is still fondly remembered among FPS fans for its tongue-in-cheek homage to the best action/sci-fi movies of the 1980s. There are references to everything from Predator and Commando to Krull and Cobra. It even stars a legend from the decade, Michael Biehn, as protagonist Sergeant Rex 'Power' Colt.

This week, Ubisoft launched a spin-off of Blood Dragon (technically, it's based on the 2023 Netflix show Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix), called Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E. It's a top-down multiplayer battle arena shooter for the PC. It even features iconic Ubisoft mascot Rayman as a commentator.

Most people don't even know about the free-to-play Captain Laserhawk. It doesn't appear as one of Ubisoft's games on the company's main website, and you won't find any mentions on the French giant's social media accounts. The reason for the quiet launch is almost certainly because this is yet another Web3/NFT-based game that Ubisoft has launched this year.

Playing Captain Laserhawk requires an NFT – the Niji Warrior ID card. Ubisoft has given 10,000 of them away, but you now have to buy it for 0.0055 ETH, or about $17.80 at the time of writing.

The idea is that the more you play the game, the more accomplishments your card captures, thereby increasing its uniqueness and value, meaning you might eventually sell it at a profit. There's also plenty of other virtual items to spend money on in the hope that they will ultimately sell for more than what you paid.

As for the game itself, like most NFT-based titles, that part seems like the least important element in Ubisoft's eyes. Polygon describes it as very underwhelming – it certainly looks cheap and pretty awful, frankly, even for early access.

This isn't the only Web3 game Ubisoft has launched this year. It released Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles on PC in October, which features NFT character cards that range in price from single figures to tens of thousands of dollars.

Ubisoft was one of many gaming companies to dive into non-fungible tokens in 2021, adding NFT-based cosmetics to Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which very few people bought. The French firm said it would stick to its principles and not back down from NFTs before endearing itself even further to the public by insisting that gamers "just don't get" NFTs. Ubisoft said in April 2022 that it was no longer making updates or NFTs for Breakpoint.