In a surprise move by Mojang Studios – the company behind Minecraft – they have declared that they will be not only ban NFTs but anything blockchain-related in their juggernaut videogame.
In a statement, the developer claimed that digital assets promote “scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values”. The decision has split the community with those in the NFT space seeing it as controversial, while crypto-skeptic gamers have praised it.
One party that was left out to dry is a project known as “NFT Worlds”. Built on one of Minecraft’s open source servers, the project was highly successful with its NFT ecosystem generating $80.8 million worth of trading volume to date. Since the announcement, its native token price and floor price of their NFTs have both taken a plunge.
Subsequently, Epic Games CEO and founder, Tim Sweeney has said that they are “definitely not going to follow” in Minecraft’s steps.
A Twitter user by the name of Joe tagged Sweeney saying, “it’d be really nice to see the same opinion from the epic games store. please get rid of every last one of those games on the store”, prompting him to follow Minecraft’s lead.
But Sweeney responded, “Developers should be free to decide how to build their games, and you are free to decide whether to play them. I believe stores and operating system makers shouldn’t interfere by forcing their views onto others. We definitely won’t.”
Epic Games is a massive PC and mac gaming platform with over 31 million active daily players, so Sweeney’s backing of blockchain-based technology will surely come as well-founded assurance to many developers looking to incorporate such features into their games. For example, Gala Games, a strong metaverse gaming leader plans to release their NFT-powered Web3 game, Grit, via Epic Games soon.
Although Epic Games doesn’t currently utilize crypto or blockchain in its own games and tools, they are definitely trending in that direction by recently raising $2 billion to expand their metaverse ambitions.
