No NFT For Minecraft: What Really Happened?

Mojang, the studio behind Minecraft, one of the most popular games of all time and sold to Microsoft for more than 2 billion dollars, has just declared that it will not use NFTs in its game. This applies to both the client side of Minecraft and the server side.

A firm stance

While for many users the world of crypto, especially with NFT seemed to lend itself perfectly to Minecraft, the developers at Mojang today took the floor to give their position on this subject.

For the Mojang studio, NFTs are not welcome and do not represent the spirit they want to convey through Minecraft. Indeed, NFTs encourage profit and create disparities between wealthy and poor players, promoting speculation-based gameplay. The developers have added on their website:

"NFTs hijack Minecraft's primary purpose of providing long-term joy and success for our players. They force you to focus on a notion of investment in a speculative world with the aim of making a profit."

Continuing their post, Mojang talks about the companies that have already tried to sell NFTs using Minecraft. The best-known case is notably the company NFT Worlds on Polygon which sells virtual land in the form of NFT which can then be used on private Minecraft servers.

Following this announcement from Mojang, the price of the NFT Worlds (WRLD) asset fell by 60%.

A flashback?

By taking this position, Mojang, which belongs to Microsoft, clearly indicates that the latter supports them in this choice and therefore potentially thinks in a similar way.

 
In the world of video games, it is strange to be closed to innovation. Especially when you know the enthusiasm that these games can cause, especially like Battle Infinity which has already collected more than $600,000 during the first 10 days of its presale. 

The fantasy league game on the Metaverse, expected in a few months, seems to be unleashing trends while it has not yet been released.

Nevertheless, Mojang is not the only one against NFTs, the famous Steam platform owned by Valve categorically refuses all games having a connection with NFTs. 

Similarly, Ubisoft, which had tried to enter this market by offering NFTs via its Tom Clancy game, had to backtrack.

On the side of NFT Worlds which is strongly impacted by the decision of the Minecraft team, a developer indicated that the first action will be to try to get in touch with Mojang. 

They hope to understand the reason for their choice and how the usage policies will apply to NFT Worlds.

No NFT for Minecraft: what really happened?

In the event that Minecraft does not offer a viable solution for them, they could turn to an engine similar to the Minecraft game in order to continue their project or even switch from platform to service allowing developers of other games to use their technology.

A still uncertain market

Understanding the decision behind the choice of the Mojang team is not necessarily easy, but at the same time, many projects have had problems in the past, including Axie Infinity with a hacker who cost him $625 million.

However, to close their letter on their website, the Minecraft team does not indicate that their choice will be final forever. On the contrary, they take the opportunity to specify:

"We will also be attentive to the evolution of blockchain technology over time in order to define whether it will allow for more secure experiences or practical applications in the field of video games. However, at this time we do not plan to include this technology in Minecraft."

While on the one hand, social networks like Twitter, Meta, or even more recently Snapchat are adopting NFTs. On the side of video games, a barrier seems to exist between the potential that this new technology can have and the fear of breaking the confidence of users.