Notes

Minecraft Developers Won't Allow NFTs On Gaming Platform

Minecraft will not allow non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be used on the popular gaming platform, with the company describing them as antithetical to Minecraft's "values of creative inclusion and playing together".



NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item, typically an image or a video, with the ownership recorded on a decentralised digital register known as a blockchain.



Digital files can be copied and deleted free of charge, but a NFT is used to identify the owner of the original file. This is usually used for trading, buying, or selling the ownership, usually for cryptocurrency.



NFTs sparked a boom in sales, reaching a peak of US$12bn (AU$17.4bn), worldwide in January. Sales fell to a 12-month low in June, due to the downturn in cryptocurrency.



Minecraft, which allows users to build whole virtual worlds, is highly customisable. Minecraft has grown to be a popular game with a large user base that creates skins, mods, maps and other content over the past 10 years.



NFTs found Minecraft to be a lucrative market with more than 141 million users by August 2021. Users are already using Minecraft to share unique digital items.



Mojang, the Microsoft-owned development studio behind Minecraft has ended speculation that NFTs might be allowed in the game. In a blog post, developers stated that blockchain technology was prohibited, stating that it was against Minecraft's values.



"Each one of these uses NFTs, and other blockchain technology creates digital owning based on scarcity or exclusion, which is contrary to Minecraft values of creative inclusion & playing together," the company stated.



"NFTs don't include all our community. They create a situation where the haves have it worse. NFTs encourage profiteering. We believe this is contrary to long-term joy, success and happiness of our players.



Mojang stated that Minecraft's creations had intrinsic value and that NFTs could have been sold at artificially-inflated or fraudulently inflated prices.



According to the studio, third-party NFTs could prove unreliable and end up costing players. It also said it was worried an implementation of Minecraft built entirely on blockchain technology could also disappear without notice - meaning players would have lost their investments.



This is referred to in the crypto community as a "rug pull", where the developers behind a crypto project shut down the project and take off with the money. Blockverse, a third-party Minecraft project, appears to be an example of this. PC Gamer reported in January that the project disappeared, despite having been invested over US$1m or AU$1.45m.



Mojang said that it was open to using "more secure blockchain technology" in Minecraft in the future, but it did not intend to do so at the moment.



We have just posted the following announcement on Discord regarding the current @Minecraft/ @nftworldsNFT status. pic.twitter.com/ARbKABRK4A



We've just shared the following announcement on our Discord regarding the current @Minecraft & @nftworldsNFT situation. pic.twitter.com/ARbKABRK4A



One group that was working on building NFTs into Minecraft said the move was a "step backwards in innovation" and if they were banned they would need to pivot to another gaming platform.
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Roblox, another very popular and customizable game, has yet to announce a position regarding NFTs. Craig Donato, chief business officer of the company, stated to VentureBeat that he did not see any reason why the game wouldn't allow NFTs, and that it was more a matter of when.



Square Enix, Ubisoft and other gaming companies are also interested in NFTs. This week Square Enix announced that for the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII next year people would be able to get physical trading cards with digital versions as NFTs.


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