Remember NFTs? Before generative AI came along to ruin the internet, steal the work of real artists, and hold down the gas pedal on the climate crisis, we had non-fungible tokens to do basically the same thing. Fortunately, everyone except a dwindling group of crypto fanatics has left the useless technolog entirely behind — at least it seemed that way, until Ubisoft inexplicably released an NFT game just last week.
If you’re lucky enough to have forgotten, NFTs are basically horrible little pictures you can pay a lot of money for with the hope that someone else will pay you more for them at a later date. Each NFT is tracked on the blockchain, which means it’s specifically tied to its owner through an online account, which in turn means functionally nothing. Still, NFTs were all the rage a few years ago among people who don’t know anything about video games and who had somehow convinced themselves that NFTs would allow them — among other things — to move custom items between totally unrelated games or somehow become rich by amassing a hoard of ugly jpegs.
