Remember NFTs? They were this hilariously stupid and obvious scam from 2021, where people—and you’ll laugh—sold the “rights” to jpegs! Yeah, I know, those things you can right-click and make an infinite number of. So silly. Anyway, three years after that all collapsed, Ubisoft has launched a game featuring the grift.

Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E. is an attempt to revive the once-popular Far Cry 3 spin-off, Blood Dragon, and the spin-off-spin-off Netflix cartoon, Captain Laserhawk, now as a top-down shooter with commentary from Rayman and perks related to Assassin’s Creed. Which, on its face, sounds like someone fell over in the Ubisoft supply closet. But it doesn’t end there, because if you want to play, you have to have an NFT!

These take the form of Niji Warrior cards, which can be bought via the game’s website, where—like in all normal games—you then have to sign in to your “wallet.” This is where your pretend money and pictures are kept, and in this case it wants you to use something called Eden Online, Ubisoft’s own in-universe creation. (You can also sign into Coinbase or Walletconnect, but not being a crypto-bro, I have no such things.) So, because I actually am an incredible games journalist, I let the thing hook into my personal Gmail account. This apparently generated a wallet I could associate with the account, meaning I was able to “enter the photobooth.”

Here, having repeatedly been told I could “reveal” my card, I was rerouted to a website called magiceden.io, a somehow-surviving NFT “marketplace,” where I discovered that all the 10,000 free options to “mint” a card had already been taken. But I need my Niji Warrior card to be able to play! So, as I read about how this “expanding the universe of the Netflix series” was “built on the Arbitrum blockchain,” and how these “10,000 AI-generated NFTs evolve based on your performance and involvement, unlocking exclusive access to in-game assets, governance rights, and perks tied to iconic Ubisoft franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Rayman and Splinter Cell,” I wondered if it was all too late.

Only here, on a non-Ubisoft site, written in small print within a section ironically entitled “Vision,” does it reveal that the “mint” is part of an “Early Access for Niji Warrior holders,” the “full launch” happening in 2025, despite the game being listed as out all over Ubisoft’s site and store. It seems we now have to click through to the “Collection” to buy one of them from someone else. Suddenly I’m thinking of Egyptian architects for some reason.

I cannot emphasize enough that Ubisoft’s sites imply that you simply “Reveal” your ID card, with no mention of money, no mention that you will need to buy cryptocurrency to have any way to play the actual game.

Speaking of playing the game, I figured I’d try that instead and see what could be done without shattering my crypto virginity. The first few tries, after discovering that Ubisoft Connect had, of course, yet again forgotten all my login credentials since the last time I was forced to use it, ended in error messages.

I was told the game was “Unable to start download (Code: 17006)“ and also “(Code: 17017).” The link to the support page told me to visit the “Live Feed Update section on Ubisoft Help,” linking to the latter. The Ubisoft Help page has no Live Feed Update section. This is really very good.

Then, as I was about to write that up, another attempt saw the game successfully download! (For some reason, it refused to acknowledge my two gaming SSDs in its list of install drives.) It was here! I clicked to launch, and here’s my favorite screenshot of the game so far:

OK, OK, that’s not fair. It clearly failed to load the first time. I gave it another go.

So no, you can’t even see a menu screen before you allow yourself to become embroiled in the murky, barely regulated underground world of crypto scams.

The cheapest card you can buy right now is 0.0037 ETH, which works out to $12.06. The most expensive is (oh my actual god) 50 ETH, or $162,975.50.

Damn, I’m just those two quarters short.

Oh! And if you thought, “Well, 12 bucks, I could maybe just suck it up and take a look,” the minimum amount it appears to be possible to add to a wallet is $21!

I cannot tell you anything else about it right now, because Ubisoft is working pretty hard to hide what the game looks like from those not willing to shoot for the moon. The publisher has accidentally forgotten to upload any trailers to its own YouTube channel, instead opting for a hardwired version on their site…which doesn’t show any in-game footage. Like, not even a hint.

Ubisoft has also, as Polygon noticed, not yet remembered to mention the game on its own socials, instead using an Eden Online sockpuppet account. On there, I was able to find a tiny glimpse of the game itself amongst the cartoon sequences. Hilariously, this is shown in a tiny window to make it as hard to make out as possible.

It looks like a crappy F2P mobile game, but as we’ve not played it, we can’t judge if that’s the case.

That’s Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E., folks. Perhaps it’s the breakthrough experience the world of NFTs and crypto has been crying out for, possibly even something to finally match the glory of Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo.

(We’ve contacted Ubi to find out why the site says “Reveal Your ID Card Now” with no mention of payment, and indeed to see if we can get access to the game without having to willingly walk into a crypto-shaped rake.)

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