Minecraft Reveals Stance on NFTs, Affects Projects that Utilize Its Custom Servers

Mojang Studios, the team behind Minecraft, has voiced its opinion regarding blockchain technology. Despite the growing potential of digital tokens within the gaming industry, the developer asserted that it is against NFTs. It believes that the technology, in general, proves to present more complications rather than benefits for developers.

“NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots,” explained Mojang. “The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.”

The recent announcement, however, comes at an untimely moment, especially as certain companies and projects have already attempted to offer their own Minecraft NFTs. Among them is NFT Worlds, a metaverse gaming platform that sells virtual land NFTs in custom servers of Minecraft. On its website, the project explains that it uses “Minecraft and its sprawling open-source ecosystem” to build “on the backbone of decades worth of open source development within the Minecraft community.”

Following Mojang’s position on NFTs, NFT worlds also came out with an announcement of their own. “This out of nowhere announcement by Microsoft/Minecraft to outright ban all possible uses of NFTs & blockchain tech within Minecraft feels like a step backwards in innovation and may even have painful downstream effects for them in the long run,” explained one developer.

Hence, the gaming platform will seek to engage with Mojang to grasp the company’s decision and how this affects NFT World’s current situation. Should Mojang remain firm in its stance, NFT Worlds will look to other potential game engines — similar to Minecraft — to run their platform. Another plan of action is for the NFT Worlds to turn into a “platform as a service” model, which will allow developers to benefit from their technology.

“As soon as the Minecraft news was announced, we’ve had multiple other metaverse/gamefi projects immediately reaching out to us wanting to use this tech we’ve already proven, strongly kickstarting possible adoption of such a platform,” NFT Worlds elaborated. It appears Mojang is taking a step back from Web3, particularly as the crypto market is increasing in volatility.

Yet, despite its recent note, the company is not necessarily turning away from the industry completely. “We will also be paying close attention to how blockchain technology evolves over time […] to determine whether it will allow for more secure experiences or other practical and inclusive applications in gaming,” said Mojang. “However, we have no plans of implementing blockchain technology into Minecraft right now.”

Source: TechCrunch