Epic Games 'definitely Won't' Follow Minecraft NFT Ban
Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney says his firm "definitely will not" follow Minecraft developers in banning non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
As previously reported, Mojang Studios, Minecraft developers, has banned NFT integrations Wednesday because it believes that NFTs are speculative and scarcity, risks of exclusion, and scams are against the game's principles.
The move was considered highly controversial within the NFT community, but it has been greeted with praise by the cohort of crypto-skeptic players.
Sweeney's company is the creators of the highly successful battle royale game Fortnite and is seen as a Metaverse platform. Although Epic Games isn't necessarily pro-crypto or NFTs, the CEO stated that Epic Games doesn't intend to force any opinions on the subject on its players:
Developers should be able to design their games and you are able to decide whether or not you want to play them. I believe that operating system developers shouldn't interfere in any way by imposing their ideas on others. We won't.
In response to the post, Twitter user Low5ive asked Sweeney if Epic Games' policy on prohibiting "hateful/discriminatory content" differs from this. Sweeney replied that Epic Games makes "editorial" judgments, however NFTs are not currently within their jurisdiction.
He stated that a store cannot make any such decisions and would only play any legal game draw a line at accepted norms like we do, or even accept games that align with the owner’s personal opinions.
Mojang Studios' NFT ban has been a major blow to NFT Worlds, a project built on Minecraft's open source servers, with a major issue.
Related: Delphi Digital: How to convince gamers to accept the inclusion of NFTs into their games
Play-to-earn (P2E), an open-source platform for play-to-earn (P2E) offers an entire ecosystem of NFTs and cryptos built around. Its NFTs generate 51,000 Ether (ETH), which is $80.8 million worth of trading volume at the time of writing. However, its NFT floor price has dropped from 3.33 Ethereum down to 1.01 ETH since news came out. While its native token WRLD dropped 55% during the same time frame.
After the Mojang announcement, the NFT Worlds team stated it is "brainstorming solutions" on how to proceed. The team has stated that they are in contact with Minecraft to find a solution. If not, a shift to a "Minecraft-like game engine" or GameFi platform has been suggested as possible options.