Last week, sandbox video game giant Minecraft expressed its decision to forbid NFTs and other blockchain technologies from its in-game servers, stirring a lot of discussions online.
While opinions about this controversial issue seemed to divide the public, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney expressed in a series of tweets how he sees the issue as a matter to be decided by game developers and the gaming community.
With this, Sweeney confirms that American game and software developer Epic Games surely won't' ban NFTs in the foreseeable future.
With Minecraft's bold move, gaming communities skeptical about the fusion of cryptocurrency and gaming applauded Minecraft's stand, while people in the NFT community saw this as a backward and disputable decision.
What Are NFTs? How Does it Affect Gaming Communities?
NFT is an abbreviation for Non-Fungible Token. According to Minecraft in its post regarding NFTs in relation to the game, NFTs are digital tokens that are commonly bought and priced using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. NFTs are valued based on their uniqueness and rarity. Most of the time, NFTs come in the form of JPEG files that is purchased alongside a token that acts as a certification of the specific NFT being an original digital file. An NFT market can be as unstable as it can get. Prices can dip as much as they can soar.
With the blockchains' penetration of online games like Minecraft, NFT owners started racketeering with in-game features like worlds, skins, and items, making a system that adds scarcity and exclusion within the game. This is primarily what Minecraft considers game-breaking and not Minecraft-like.
Minecraft also mentions how some third-party NFTs may pose a threat to some players that may cost users who buy them.
Minecraft's reason for disallowing NFTs in its games is primarily because of the effect of NFTs to the game's safe, inclusive, and play-together culture.
Epic Games' Stand
Epic Games manifests that game developer should have the freedom to choose whatever is best for their respective games. In a Twitter reply, CEO Sweeney says that "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."
Despite openness to the idea of NFTs in video games, Sweeney then emphasizes that he does not necessarily promote NFTs and their blockchain. Instead, he reiterates that the decision is in the hands of the game developers and its gaming communities.
With Minecraft's bold and controversial decision, established NFT projects on Minecraft servers like NFT World are now facing a difficult dilemma. According to CoinCodeCap, "the community-driven play-to-earn (P2E) platform has a whole cryptocurrency and NFT ecosystem built around it, and its NFTs currently generates 51,000 ETH or $80.8 million in trading volume."
With these massive changes triggered by Minecraft, other gaming platforms can be resonating the same sentiments. It is while others may stand with Epic Games and let game developers and players decide the fate of NFT and gaming.