Ultra Review

Ultra is a blockchain-powered PC game distribution platform that wants to do for digital game ownership what blockchain did for digital money: make it truly yours. Founded in 2018 by David Hanson and Nicolas Gilot, Ultra offers a desktop client where players can buy games, play them, and, crucially, resell them as NFTs.

This is Ultra's key innovation: when you buy a game on Ultra, you receive an NFT representing your game license. You can then sell that license to another player on the secondary market, something that Steam, Epic, and every other digital storefront explicitly prohibit.

Ultra runs on its own blockchain, built on EOSIO technology (the same foundation as EOS). This gives it:

• High throughput: Capable of thousands of transactions per second
• Feeless transactions: End users pay nothing for transfers and purchases
• Fast finality: Transactions confirm in seconds
• NFT game licenses: Each purchased game is an NFT that can be traded or resold

The Ultra Games client is a desktop application that functions as a game launcher, store, and marketplace. It looks and feels like a simplified version of Steam, with a library, store pages, community features, and a built-in wallet.

The technology is arguably Ultra's strongest asset. The blockchain is fast and reliable, the client works, and the NFT game license concept is genuinely novel. The challenge has never been technical capability. It has been getting games and players onto the platform.

This is where Ultra struggles most. The game catalog, while growing, is minuscule compared to Steam's 70,000+ games or even Epic's curated library. Most of Ultra's catalog consists of indie titles, with only a handful of recognizable names.

Key partnerships include:

• Ubisoft: Operates a block producer node on Ultra's blockchain (though this hasn't translated into Ubisoft games being sold on Ultra)
• AMD: Partnership for game distribution and promotion
• Atari: Several classic Atari titles available on Ultra

The gap between these partnership headlines and actual catalog depth is telling. Having Ubisoft as a node operator is not the same as having Assassin's Creed for sale on your platform. Until Ultra can offer games that people actually want to play, titles they would currently buy on Steam, the platform will struggle with the chicken-and-egg adoption problem.

UOS (Ultra Token):

• Total Supply: ~1 billion UOS
• Utility: Game purchases, marketplace transactions, staking for resource allocation, developer fees
• ATH: Approximately $2.45 during the 2021 bull market

UOS has clear utility within the Ultra ecosystem as the currency for buying games, paying developer fees, and transacting on the marketplace. The problem is that ecosystem activity is low, which means organic demand for UOS is minimal.

The token model is straightforward but dependent on platform adoption. More games and more users mean more UOS demand. Without that adoption, the token's utility remains theoretical rather than practical.

• David Hanson, Co-CEO. Background in game distribution and technology.
• Nicolas Gilot, Co-CEO. Extensive experience in gaming industry business development.

The team has deep gaming industry experience, and unlike many crypto projects, they have focused on building a real product rather than just running a token. However, the slow pace of adoption raises questions about go-to-market strategy and whether the team has the resources and connections to compete with Steam and Epic.

Ultra has raised modest funding compared to peers, which may be limiting its ability to attract developers with the kind of financial incentives that Epic used to build its store.

Ultra is solving a real problem. Digital game ownership is a genuine consumer pain point, and the inability to resell digital games costs consumers billions. The technology works, the vision is compelling, and game resale NFTs could be genuinely disruptive. But the execution timeline has been long, adoption is minimal, and the competitive landscape is brutal. Steam has massive network effects, and even Epic (with billions in Fortnite revenue to subsidize) has struggled to dent Steam's dominance. Ultra needs either a killer exclusive game or a dramatic shift in industry sentiment toward digital ownership to break through. The idea may ultimately win, just possibly not for Ultra.