Minecraft will not allow the use of non-consumable (NFT) tokens on the popular gaming platform, and the company describes them as antithetical to Minecraft’s “values of creative inclusion and playing together.”
NFTs confer ownership of a single digital element, usually an image or video, with ownership registered in a decentralized digital register known as a blockchain.
Normally, digital files can be copied or deleted for free, but an NFT identifies the owner of the original file for the purpose of buying, selling, or marketing the property, usually by cryptocurrency.
The hype surrounding NFTs led to a boom in sales that peaked at $ 12 billion worldwide in January. However, coinciding with the fall of the cryptocurrency, sales recently began to fall to a 12-month low of $ 1 billion (A $ 1.45 billion) in June.
Minecraft, which allows users to build entire virtual worlds, is highly customizable. Over the more than 10 years that the game has existed, it has created a large community of users who design aspects, modifications, and maps for the game.
Minecraft represented a potentially attractive market for NFTs, with a user base, estimated at more than 141 million as of August 2021, which was already dedicated to sharing unique digital elements developed for the game.
But the Microsoft development studio behind Minecraft, Mojang, has put an end to speculation that NFT could be allowed into the game. In a blog post on Wednesday, the developers said blockchain technology was not allowed, claiming it was antithetical to Minecraft values.
“Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates a digital property based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft’s values of creative inclusion and play together.” said the company.
“NFTs do not include our entire community and create a scenario for those who have and those who don’t. it is incompatible with the joy and long-term success of our players. “
Mojang said the creations in Minecraft had intrinsic value and there had been cases where NFTs were sold at artificially or fraudulently inflated prices.
The study said it was concerned that third-party NFTs were unreliable and could end up costing players. He also said he was concerned that a Minecraft implementation built entirely with blockchain technology would also disappear without warning, meaning players would have lost their investments.
This is known in the crypto community as “carpet pulling,” where the developers behind a crypto project shut down the project and take off with the money. This seems to have already happened with a third-party Minecraft project called Blockverse. PC Gamer reported in January that the project disappeared after investing more than US $ 1 million (A $ 1.45 million).
Mojang left the door open to the use of “safer” blockchain technology in Minecraft in the future, but said he had no plans to allow it at present.
A group that was working on creating NFT in Minecraft said the move was a “step backwards in innovation” and that if they were banned they would have to move to another gaming platform.
Another very popular and customizable game in the same way, Roblox, which allows you to buy items within the game, has not yet announced a position on NFT. However, the company’s business director Craig Donato told VentureBeat in April that he didn’t see why the game wouldn’t allow NFT and that it was more a matter of when.
Other gaming companies like Square Enix and Ubisoft are also playing with NFT. This week Square Enix announced that for the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII next year people could get physical trading cards with digital versions like NFT.