In a recent statement, Minecraft’s developer Mojang Studios has claimed that it will not be supporting NFTs or any other blockchain technologies in its games. This is major news for NFTs and their relationship with gaming as Minecraft is the most successful video game in the world, and it is prime real-estate for NFT properties to be introduced. The announcement has also prompted many gamers who are adamantly against NFTs to call on other gaming giants to make similar announcements.NFTs are the highly controversial blockchain-based tokens signifying ownership over a digital asset. The technology has received its fair share of criticism, but it has also made the companies that produce NFTs a lot of money. Unsurprisingly then, a lot of video game companies like Ubisoft have been dabbling in the technology, much to the dismay of some fans.This puts video game developers and publishers in a difficult position, as there is clearly a lot of money to be made in perusing NFTs, but at the cost of angering many fans. In response to Mojang’s anti-NFT statement, a Twitter user has called on Epic Games, and specifically its CEO, Tim Sweeney, to make a similar announcement and remove all games from the Epic Games Store which utilize blockchain technology. Tim Sweeney replied to this comment, but stated that it wasn’t the place for stores to interfere or force their views onto game developers.
Sweeney ended his statement by saying that Epic Games “definitely won’t” be restricting the game’s sold on the Epic Game’s Store to those without blockchain technologies. It is important to note, however, that although Minecraft is a series with multiple games and separate properties, it is a single franchise developed Mojang, and what Tim Sweeney is referring to is the sale of third-party games on the Epic Games Store, and not specifically games owned by Epic Games.
Epic Games refusal to condemn NFTs outright does not necessarily mean that the company is in support of the blockchain technology. However, in a subsequent reply to Tim Sweeney’s statement on Twitter, a senior software engineer for Blizzard, Joseph Bleau, called Epic Games' supposed neutrality on NFTs a “tacit endorsement” which only serves to normalize NFTs with a broader audience.
If Epic Games does go on to actively support or produce NFT’s rather than simply allow other developers on the Epic Game’s store to do so, this will be a U-turn on another statement made by Tim Sweeney in September 2021 in which he claimed that Epic Games “aren’t touching NFTs.” Sweeney’s cited reasons for this position at the time included his belief that the crypto industry as a whole was tangled up with scams and decentralized tech foundations.