Developers shun crypto and NFTs according to GDC survey
Doesn’t seem they’re too thrilled
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The Games Developer Conference is preparing to reconvene after a couple years away in person, with an expected 18, 000 people to appear at the event in March. With each event, a massive survey goes out to gauge where the industry is at amongst its peers, with the hot question this year being about cryptocurrencies, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and the general technology of the blockchain.
According to the survey’s results, 70% of the industry’s members are not interested in NFTs and 72% have no interaction with cryptocurrencies in general. 27% do want to bring cryptocurrencies as a payment option into their games in the future, using the large quantity of cash stored on the blockchain to their advantage.
Non-fungible tokens have caused ire amongst various industries, with ecological and moral issues being arisen fairly frequently. NFTs have very little moderation being part of the blockchain, which in turn allows anyone to pull art from the web and make a potential profit off it. There’s also a lot of scams that are connected with it.
Over the last few days, for example, Ozzy Osbourne’s NFT project accidentally scammed thousands out of money due to an errant link.
The gaming industry has also attempted to make a push into the realm of crypto and NFTs, with Ubisoft actually launching their own service, Ubisoft Quartz, which has been met with low adoption rates and apathy towards the current items available.
Alongside this, developers at these studios have also come out against the inclusion of the technology in their games they have to work on.
Developers behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R have had to walk back their inclusion of NFTs into the upcoming game after a massive fan backlash and SEGA apparently have trademarked SEGA NFTs after commenting that they’d consider it if it wasn’t a money-making schemes.
Most egregious was Square Enix’s President talking about how gaming was no longer for fun, but focus in on the ‘play-to-earn’ concept.
Gaming’s audience consistently reject the idea of crypto technologies entering the gaming space, especially in the current climate of various mining operations claiming a majority of graphics cards and computer components, as well as microtransactions and free-to-play games flooding the industry.
While the technology has its merits, decentralisation of major functions from the many conglomerates who claim a vast majority of the services used on a daily basis is needed, there is far too much work to be done in terms of reducing the ecological and morality side of things before the industry can bring into the fold.
