Epic Games 'definitely Won't' Follow Minecraft NFT Ban

Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney says his firm "definitely won't" follow Minecraft developers in banning nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

As previously reported Mojang Studios has banned NFT integrations in Minecraft on Wednesday. It believes that NFTs' speculative aspects, scarcity, risks and exclusions and scams associated with NFTs are against the game’s core principles.

The NFT community viewed the move as controversial, but it was well-received by crypto-skeptic gamers.

Sweeney's firm is the creators and maintainers of Fortnite, a popular battle royale game. The company is also known as Metaverse. While Epic Games isn't necessarily pro-crypto or NFTs, the CEO said the firm isn't looking to enforce any views on the subject on its users:

Developers should have complete control over how they build their games. And you should have complete freedom to decide whether to use them. I don't believe that stores or operating system makers should force their views on others. We will not.

In response to the post, Twitter user Low5ive asked Sweeney if Epic Games' policy on prohibiting "hateful/discriminatory content" differs from this. In response, Sweeney suggested that Epic Games does make "editorial" judgments, but NFTs don't currently fall under them.

He stated that a store could either make no such judgements and only host legal items, or draw a line at mainstream acceptable norms, like we do, to accept only games that are in keeping with the owner's personal beliefs.

Mojang Studios' NFT ban has left NFT Worlds, a project built on Minecraft's open-source servers, with a major problem.

Related: Delphi Digital: How can you get gamers to accept NFTs integration

The community-driven Play-to Earn (P2E) platform has an entire cryptocurrency and NFT ecosystem around it. Its NFTs have generated 51,000 Ether, or $80.8 Million worth of trading volume as of writing. The floor price for its NFTs dropped from 3.33 ETH and 1.01 ETH during the news drop, while its native token WRLD fell by 55%.

NFT Worlds stated that it is now "brainstorming ideas" about how to move forward following the Mojang announcement. The team mentioned that it is working to get in contact with Minecraft to see if a possible solution can be found. Otherwise, a pivot to a "Minecraft-like game engine" or GameFi platform has been outlined as possible options.
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