Sweeney has made his feelings on the subject of banning NFTs on his Epic Games Store clear:
“definitely not”.
Sweeney is an interesting character because, in addition to his obvious technical brilliance and insight, he is dedicated to fighting for certain principles of openness (particularly revenue splits) and the position of platform owners.
After a roller coaster 24 hours in the gaming world, where Mojang Studios shut off all NFT connections on its Minecraft platform.
Following his remarks, a portion of the gaming community began to howl for NFT Blood.
Sweeney responded to the call to ban NFTs on the Epic Game Store by restating some of his ideals. He’s been consistent in his views, and it’s not the first time he’s spoken about it.
In response, Sweeney said: “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.”
Epic Games, the legendary game “Fortnite,” and the Unreal Engine on which it, and many other games, have been built were created by Tim Sweeney.
Following the ban on Minecraft NFTs, a number of gamers moved their attention to Sweeney in the hopes that he would follow Mojang’s example.
The makers of the massive phenomenon Minecraft, Mojang, banned all kinds of NFT activity on its platform, stating that it has an “investment and pricing mentality.”
Minecraft’s Twitter statement on July 21st, 2022 says:
“To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content…”
NFT World’s has been one such developer, who created a successful platform for Minecraft that integrated NFTs and cryptocurrency into its ecosystem.
The Future Of NFT Worlds 🌎
Read our statement below through the attached Twitter thread, or here: https://t.co/w0nf1f2xxn
A thread 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/Oy2T7oXQVg— NFT Worlds (@nftworldsNFT) July 22, 2022
The NFT World s initiative has attracted $80 million in NFT trading volume and claims to have 100,000 gamers.
The Epic Games Store is competing against Steam, which has previously banned non-fungible tokens. Even if there are a lot of ape-loving acolytes, the technology and ‘web3’ in general continue to be loathed by the conventional online audience, and delivering them a beating is always going to be popular.
The game will be rendered null and void, according to Mojang’s new policy.
A wounded NFT Worlds responded aggressively to their community, releasing a lengthy statement in which it discussed its future alternatives.
They also suggested that option one, in which a settlement would be reached with Minecraft and operations would resume as normal.
They suggested option two: making their own game, which would be based on a Minecraft-like game engine.
Finally, for option three, they said that they could “pivot to a GameFi platform” with their own, proven formula for success.
Microsoft’s ban was a highly contentious and abrupt decision, which essentially banned a small portion of the Minecraft community.
Sweeney, on the other hand, kept his ground. He’s a guy with strongly held beliefs, as seen in his court battle with Apple.
In response to a comment about Epic Games’ policy prohibiting
“hateful/discriminatory content may be akin to banning NFTs, he said:
“A store could choose to make no such judgments and host anything that’s legal, or choose to draw the line at mainstream acceptable norms as we do, or accept only games that conform to the owner’s personal beliefs.”
Sweeney does have a point, inasmuch as Epic doesn’t feel it is its responsibility to go around telling developers not to utilize blockchain technology and that it should not use its position to limit their sales.
The argument against it is that many of these projects are now fraudulent, and Mojang was perhaps compelled to act: for instance, the unofficial Minecraft NFT game Blockverse vanished with $1.2 million in January. And there’s no shortage of broader examples of NFT-related misconduct or even outright criminality.
