Yesterday indie video game publisher Team17 announced its collaboration with Reality Gaming Group, with a series of “green NFTs” based on their popular Worms franchise. However, it wasn’t long before the gaming community voiced their disagreement with this decision, including developers who decided to stop working with Team17 like Aggro Crab, developers of Going Under and Subway Midnight.
“We believe that NFTs cannot be environmentally friendly, or useful, and actually they are a fucking scam”, says the statement that Aggro Crab shared on its Twitter account. Although the company disagrees with Team17’s decision to release NFT’s of Worms, asks players not to harass Team17 employees, as the decision will most likely come from above and the publishers and developers have no part in the matter. Let’s remember that according to the GDC, 70% of developers do not want NFT or cryptocurrencies in their video games.
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These were not the only independent developers who declared themselves against NFTs in their video games, because yesterday we also saw a message from Navigator Entertainment, developers of one of the indie gems of 2021: Greak: Memories of Azur. NFTs have been one of the most discussed topics so far this year and because of that the developers felt the need to tell their players that they had no intention of joining the stream, as they seek to “provide value to the video game industry and improve it”.
Ghost Town Games are the developers of Overcooked! All You Can Eat, one of the best multiplayer experiences of all time, who also shared a message assuring players that they are not going to make NFTs of Overcooked or any other game they make. “We do not support NFTs. We believe that they carry a very large social and environmental cost.”.
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Playtonic Gameswho posted one of the best games of 2021 with Demon Turf, also shared a message saying “we have no interest in using NFTs in any aspect of our business now or in the future”. However, they clarify that they are not only against Non-Fungible Tokens in video games, but in any use they want to give them around the world. Like the other developers, they ask players to be respectful when making their dissatisfaction public.
The developers of A Hat in Timean adorable 3D platformer with a visual style reminiscent of The Wind Waker, simply said “stinky nfts” to express their dissatisfaction with the trend of wanting to implement them in video games, While players and developers express their rejection of NFTs in video games, an executive from Ubisoft defended them saying that in reality “players do not understand them”.