The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, says his company will not ban in-game NFTs on the lines of Mojang Studios’ Minecraft game’s Lead. Earlier announcement by Minecraft offers a clear indication of banning in-game NFTs on its game servers.
A twitter user asked Tim Sweeney, “It’d be really nice to see the same opinion from the Epic Games Store.” Voicing his stance, Tim Sweeney upheld the vitality of developer-freedom in game development with a tweet reply.
Having over 194 million registered users by 2021-end, Epic Games has a variety of NFT-centric games coming-up by the end of 2022.
Minecraft states in its official announcement, “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.”
Epic Games’ ‘build the metaverse’ plans are apparent following its $2 billion fundraise with a $31.5 billion valuation. But Epic Games’ venture into using in-game cryptocurrency and blockchain networks is still new.
Replying to Twitter user Low5ive’s query on Epic Games’ ‘hateful/discriminatory content’ prohibition policy, Sweeney 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.”
Mojang Studios’ announcement of an NFT ban in Minecraft leaves an NFT player built on its open-source servers, NFT Worlds, to ‘brainstorm solutions’ for the future. Otherwise, a ‘Minecraft-like game engine’ or GameFi platform would be used.