decrypt.co
Ultra, a PC marketplace for both blockchain and traditional “Web2” video games, is about to make good on one of its key selling points: It’s about to launch the first digital PC game that can be resold to other users via a tokenized license.
On Wednesday, Ultra will launch the feature for Josh Journey: Darkness Totems, a cartoonish beat-’em-up game that was previously released on PC via Steam and other marketplaces, as well as via the Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox console storefronts. It has “Positive” user reviews on Steam, and the game doesn’t incorporate any in-game crypto or NFT elements.
Developed by Provincia Studio, Josh Journey will be sold through Ultra’s platform—and if buyers decide they’re done with it, they can list the game via Ultra’s secondary marketplace and sell it to another player. Developers who enable the completely optional feature will earn a cut of the resale price and can control aspects like royalty share and minimum resale price.
The license for the digital game is represented by an NFT on the Ultra layer-1 blockchain, a fork of the EOS network. When the game is resold, the NFT (or “Uniq,” as Ultra calls it) is transferred to the new owner, who then has the legal right to play it.
“We’re excited that Josh Journey will forever be the very first tradable title on Ultra Games,” said Provincia Studio co-founder Guilherme Araujo, in a release. “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.”
The PC gaming industry is essentially all-digital today, and the console gaming world has increasingly embraced digital over physical boxed copies with discs or cartridges. But with traditional gaming platforms, there’s no way to resell a digital game. Ultra sees tokenization as a way to enforce a digital resale standard that benefits developers along with players.
"Ultra took the initial step of beginning to tokenize the games on our PC store back in July, and we're proud to say that all games are now tokenized on our blockchain,” Ultra co-founder and co-CEO Nicolas Gilot told Decrypt’s GG. “The transferability and tradability tokenization can enable, with permission from the game developer or publisher, is rightly grabbing headlines.”
Gilot added that Ultra is exploring further functionality like token-gated benefits, letting developers offer exclusive content or discounts on future games, along with access to events like esports competitions—another area that Ultra is leaning into.
“This is really exciting, experimental, proof-of-concept stuff that is barely scratching the surface of what this tech can do,” he said. “Hopefully we can capture the imagination of content owners, platforms, and users around how blockchain can create fairness and additional value across all forms of digital content.”