The growth of DeFi, Metaverse and NFT was a collective affair in the last bull run. While DeFi enabled another form of value yield, lending, and banking, the Metaverse and NFTs evolved from entertainment and product-based value creation. The success of OpenSea.io and popular NFTs projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club(BAYC) is evident, but now, amidst a bear market, non-believers are taking a stand.
According to a Minecraft blog post, Developer Mojang Studios announced that they were not looking to integrate NFTs in the mainstream development of the game. In fact, the new usage guidelines indicated that NFTs create ‘conflict’ with their policies and affect the spirit of Minecraft. The post read,
“In our Minecraft Usage Guidelines, we outline how a server owner can charge for access, and that all players should have access to the same functionality. We have these rules to ensure that Minecraft remains a community where everyone has access to the same content.”
Additionally, the organization oddly mentioned safety and ‘inclusion experience’ as major reasons why they are supporting a blockchain prohibition. Hence, independent blockchain and NFT projects will also be restricted from using Minecraft’s brand to develop such Nong-Fungible Tokens.
Earlier, NFT Worlds is one such project that used Minecraft’s source code as a base for an NFT-powered digital environment. They have generated close to $170 million in NFTs trading volume at press time. NFT Worlds Co-Founder, ArkDev responded to the announcement. He tweeted,
Community Reacts to Minecraft NFTs situation
It did not take long for the community to give their opinions on the situation. Founder of headdaonft said,
In fact, in April 2022, Mojang developers released a petition to rile up game developers against the use of non-fungibles and integrations. However, the petition received underwhelming support, with only 72 signees in the 1st week, and less than 500 till last week.
Now, it is a fair reaction because the demand for such tokens is not unproven. While the current sales might be low, the figures had risen up to $25 billion in 2021, from a mere $100 million in 2020. Plus, NFTs are bringing a new purpose to the entire gaming ecosystem. Owning characters in-game will not just be limited to one domain and stagnancy, but players will be to develop a value for it in marketplaces.
Minecrafts’ policies and guidelines are possibly shutting down on a billion-dollar revenue generation arm. Martha Reyes, head of research at Bequant stated,
“Emergen Research estimates that the compound annual growth rate of the global NFTs marketplace will be 10.7% over the next few years.”