Minecraft’s current ban on NFTs sparked a brand new wave of debate in each the NFT and gaming communities earlier this week. Most notably, Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney weighed in on the matter in a current reply to the Minecraft account’s tweet, urging platforms like Minecraft to not “interfere [with a consumer’s decision making] by forcing their views onto others.”
Understandably, some NFT critics have been fast to interpret Epic Games’ impartial stance on NFTs as a full-on endorsement of the expertise. Sweeney corrected these customers, as an alternative encouraging them to “make their own decisions” on whether or not crypto, NFTs, and Web3 are proper for them on a person degree.
Epic Games takes a contrasting view to Steam on NFTs
However, even with Sweeney’s comparatively open stance on NFTs, he talked about in a later tweet that Epic Games has no plans to combine NFTs into any of its personal initiatives. That consists of Fortnite — even when the sport is successfully already thought-about a metaverse gaming expertise. Case in level, a number of digital live shows have already taken place throughout the confines of the sport’s “battle royale.” Sweeney himself partially acknowledged this throughout his wave of tweets that day, favorably evaluating the person expertise on Fortnite to a hypothetical “metaverse styled” sport that options anti-consumer pricing on the very prime.
In complete, as a supplier of providers like Unreal Engine — which artists like FVCKRENDER have famously used to construct out their huge digital worlds — Epic Games stays impartial on NFTs, with no prohibitions on video games integrating this expertise from showing on the Epic Games Store.
This stance stands in stark distinction to Steam, the Epic Games Store’s largest competitor. In late 2021, the gaming large introduced that it was banning any and all video games that includes blockchain expertise from being put up on the market on its digital platform. On the opposite hand, Epic Games Store is about to provide Gala Games’ GRIT a house when it releases within the close to future. But, as soon as GRIT launches, it’ll grow to be the primary blockchain sport out there on Epic Games Store’s storefront — and certain not the final.