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What happens now that the NFT bubble has burst?
“The game industry’s adoption of NFTs so far has been completely pointless and in most cases, nothing more than an
obvious cash-grab”
Giovanni Petrantoni, CEO and Founder at Fragnova
IN 2021, media headlines were dominated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) selling for millions of dollars. Whether you liked or loathed the fact that an NFT of the doge meme could fetch $4m or digital images of pixelated aliens such as those in the CryptoPunk collection were selling for over $10m, the general consensus was that NFTs are here to stay, and people were willing to spend a lot of money on them. Just in case you don’t know, NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that can be tied to objects such as music, media content, in-game items, or maybe providing certain perks in real life such as exclusive access to events. Ownership of these tokens is stored in a blockchain (usually tied to the Ethereum network), allowing them to be sold and traded for cryptocurrency. The hype behind NFTs eventually caught the attention of the wider video game industry, but gamers have been fiercely critical of any such plans. That’s because the game industry’s adoption of NFTs so far has been completely pointless and in most cases, nothing more than an obvious cash-grab.
When Ubisoft announced it was launching its Quartz plan with in-game NFTs (Digits) available through Ghost Recon Breakpoint, gamers were incredibly vocal about how much they hated this idea (69% of gamers hate NFTs, according to Fanspot). When Team17 and GSC Game World announced their NFT plans for Worms and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 this year, the backlash from both gamers and games media was so significant they were abandoned entirely. This is what happens when you try and rush through
6 | MCV/DEVELOP September 2022
new ideas into established game franchises that add absolutely no value to their players or the teams that build them. It’s not just gamers pushing back against
NFTs. Minecraft’s creator, Mojang Studios, recently published a statement saying that NFT integration is something that they’ll “never support or allow” NFTs in Minecraft, although it didn’t completely rule out using blockchain technology in the future, as Mojang Studios will continue to monitor this to see if it will ever “allow for more secure experiences or other practical and inclusive applications in gaming.” A lot of the scepticism and criticism of NFTs was due to the fact that many people believed the NFT hype was just a huge bubble waiting to burst. Prices have been declining steadily since the beginning of this year, with NFT sales experiencing a 92% decline from its peak of 225k sales in September 2021. Couple this with the crumbling crypto market where the biggest currency, Bitcoin, has lost around 58% of its value in Q2 2022, and you can see why Team17 and GSC Game World might have dodged a bullet. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons the wider gaming industry is so critical of NFTs, and I say the wider gaming industry because web-based games such as CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity have been utilising NFTs, blockchain technology and cryptocurrency since 2017, only they never made a big song and dance about calling them NFTs and weren’t heralding their games as the future of the industry. The NFTs for Cryptokitties and Axie Infinity are
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