Over the past year or so, the next biggest cryptocurrency scam is the concept of the NFT, “non-fungible token”, which supposedly will revolutionize the world of art and digital content through blockchain. However, many game developers are apparently not interested in putting NFTs in gaming, according to a newly-released survey.
The survey, an annual one called the State of the Game Industry Report, surveyed 2700 different game developers. 70 percent of the responders said that they weren’t interested in NFTs at all, while 21 percent said they were and seven percent said they were extremely interested. The remaining one percent said they were already working on implementing them.
The numbers were similar when the survey asked about the possibility of using cryptocurrency to pay for games, so it seems like, for now, cryptocurrencies of any stripe won’t be welcome in the vast majority of the gaming industry. Of course, at the same time, many big gaming companies have expressed some sort of interest in putting NFTs in gaming.
Ubisoft, for instance, put NFTs into Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, which have been staggeringly unpopular both with players and with its own developers. Square Enix, or at least an executive at Square Enix, has also expressed interest in NFTs and cryptocurrency, despite the fact that part of Final Fantasy 14’s newest expansion, Endwalker, suffered enormous server queue times because of a lack of superconductors that would have otherwise been used to build more servers.
GSC Game World, the developers of the STALKER games, also attempted to introduce NFTs into STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl, but backpedaled after huge backlash from the playerbase. Sega has also commentated on NFTs in gaming, saying they wouldn’t engage in NFTs if they were found to be a moneymaking scheme.
Hopefully this survey ends up proving to be true in the future, especially given the negative environmental impact that NFTs and cryptocurrency in general have and the general ill-feeling towards crypto by the world at large.