Mojang Studios, the makers of the ever-popular Minecraft, is taking a page from the old U.S. anti-drugs playbook, though it seems "Just Say No" works much better for blockchain-based money making schemes than it ever did for narcotics.
The Microsoft-owned studio posted on Wednesday that NFTs in Minecraft are "generally not something that we will support or permit." It stated that the Minecraft Usage Guidelines were being updated to state that blockchain technology will not be allowed to integrate into Minecraft's game client. i love Also, it cannot be used to create NFTs based in-game content such as skins, mods, or items.
The devs claimed that blockchain technology's concept of digital ownership is based in "scarcity & exclusion", which "doesnt align avec Minecraft values of creative inclusive and playing together." They also stated that third party NFTs can end up costing players who have them. Third party NFTs are dependent on people creating blockchain technology, "who might vanish without notice."
This actually happened. Blockverse, a NFT project supposedly designed for Minecraft, concocted an estimated $1.2million from early investors who purchased Blockverse characters in NFT format on sites such as OpenSeas. The project also included a cryptocurrency called $Diamond. In January, project creators took all money invested and deleted the project's website, Discord, Twitter account and all associated cryptocurrency. This is what's commonly called a "rug pulling" in the crypto world.
Although the Minecraft developers left it open for blockchain tech to be added in the future, they stated that they have no plans to implement blockchain technology in Minecraft right now.
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You can expect that those projects that were already trying to integrate Minecraft into the blockchain were not wholly enthused by the news. NFT Worlds, which is a blockchain-based business where users can buy NFTs to digital environments -mostly those found within Minecraft-were stung hard. The company posted a Discord to its Twitter account informing users that they were working with solutions "around the Minecraft EULA Changes" and even considered pivoting to their Minecraft-like platform.
Despite the game being almost 13 years old, 141 million active players still come back to Minecraft every month, as of August 2021 numbers from Statista. In a 2019 interview, Helen Chiang, head of Minecraft studio, stated that Minecraft players were on average 24 years old. Chiang explained that the game is designed to be accessible to children. The ERSB rating of Minecraft players is 10 and over. The client's money-making investment scheme raises red flags. It is also a potential for abuse. Chiang reportedly told Edge that "We need to be really clear and simple around how we plan to monetize in the game."
Roblox, another game geared towards kids, has embraced monetization and in-game promotions that are geared toward children. Roblux is used to incentivize users to spend Roblux in-game on items, while they visit worlds that are specifically designed to promote brands such as Ralph Lauren, Nike, and Vans. The game's creators updated their community standards last year to make a vague reference to NFTs in-game. Roblox users cannot offer to act as models for assets and are therefore not permitted to use Roblox for payment.