Ultra, a complete PC gaming hub created by AAA talent from companies like Ubisoft, Playstation and Nintendo, announced the launch of the world’s very first tradable digital video game. This groundbreaking development empowers gamers to resell video gaming content to fellow enthusiasts, redefining the essence of digital ownership in the gaming ecosystem.
The cornerstone of this transformative shift is Ultra’s proprietary blockchain technology, which seamlessly integrates gamers, game developers and publishers into a fairer, more sustainable paradigm where all can benefit. Embracing this technological innovation and forever securing its status as the world’s first tradable game is indie title Josh Journey: Darkness Totems from Provincia Studio. Users now gain the unprecedented ability to not only purchase but also resell captivating digital gaming content among themselves, heralding a new era in video game distribution. Ultra’s recent independent survey of 2000 PC gamers – the full findings of which are set to be released in January 2024 – showed that the vast majority (64%) of PC games are already bought at a discount or in a bundle, or downloaded for free.
This technological leap addresses an unspoken reality within digital entertainment: the absence of true ownership for users over the content they buy. Currently, the purchase of a PC game or any other digital content merely grants users an individual license to access and enjoy the material, a privilege susceptible to removal at any given moment. By representing all of the game licenses on its platform as digital tokens – “tokenizing” them – Ultra is introducing what could be a decisive shift toward granting users genuine ownership rights, revolutionising the status quo governing digital content transactions.
Nicolas Gilot, Co-CEO at Ultra, said: “For the majority of mainstream PC gamers, true ownership of their digital games isn’t a burning issue – until it is. Recent history has clearly shown that digital content in users’ libraries can be removed at short notice as platforms, companies and licensing agreements change. By tokenizing the games on Ultra and providing developers with the option to make their titles tradable, we hope to unlock new revenue streams and community engagement features for developers of all types of PC game, while giving all users true ownership of their content – even if they don’t know they need it yet!”
Guilherme Araujo, Co-Founder of Provincia Studio, said: “We’re excited that Josh Journey will forever be the very first tradable title on Ultra Games! This is a great opportunity for us to understand more about this new business model for games and see how it can enhance existing revenue streams, and create new ones. Blockchain and tokenization are not familiar concepts to us but the enthusiasm of the Ultra community is enormous and we can’t wait to see them enjoy and share Josh Journey.”
While Ultra’s tradable game technology is available to every game on its next-gen PC store, it’s up to developers to decide whether to activate reselling of their titles and set rules such as minimum resale price and desired revenue split. Josh Journey: Darkness Totems, a beautifully hand drawn beat’em up game, is a traditional PC game with no blockchain elements, showing the potential of this technology for the mainstream games industry. Ultra Games has an extensive catalogue of games including web3 titles Phantom Galaxies, R3V3NGE and Aether: Trading Card Game, and much-loved PC games and gaming series such as Lords of the Fallen, The Walking Dead Definitive Series, WRC7, the Syberia series and the Beholder series. Ultra is powered by its custom-built layer 1 blockchain and native token, UOS.