NFT ( Non-Fungible Token ) and blockchain games are gaining more and more popularity. Basically we are talking about games where money can supposedly be won, and we are not dealing with normal and current games , but with games that are listed as if it were just another cryptocurrency .
Although at first it seems quite difficult to understand, if you have seen one of the recent videos that Lord Draugr published a few days ago you will understand that this type of “games” definitely moves in another league.
From an external point of view (maybe I’m wrong) they seem more like a speculation tool than anything else, and it seems logical to think that they should be separated from the rest of action games, platforms, adventures, etc. that we could find in any store or video game platform to use.
Valve bans posting of blockchain and NFT games on Steam
From Valve they seem to agree with this idea, since recently the company that owns Steam has just updated its list of ” Things that you should not publish on Steam ” to mention these types of applications.
As pointed out from The Verge , this change in Steam’s guidelines is due to the fact that the company does not allow to include items or elements in its games that could have value in the real world . Others will think that this maneuver by Valve is a way to clean their hands and avoid controversy, and surely they will not be wrong either.
Today there is a large commercial market around skins and cosmetic elements of games like Counter Strike and Team Fortress, and these titles are still present on Steam. Therefore, it does not appear that the real value of the elements of the game is the real problem. However, cryptocurrency and NFT-based games do not enjoy a very good reputation, and listing them in your store would certainly open the door to more than deserved criticism.
Many still have very fresh in their memory the “scared” of the developer of Evolved Apes , an NFT-based fighting game that came to nothing after its engine disappeared with the almost 3 million dollars that investors had contributed / players, just a week after the presentation of the project.
Image: Evolved Apes.
In any case, it is clear that blockchain games and other derivatives of cryptocurrencies should be treated in a different way, since at heart they are neither games nor fun-oriented, and of course they should have their own space outside the stores of conventional video games.
Epic Games, another of the largest online video game stores, has surprisingly disengaged from Steam, and although at the moment it indicates that it is not interested in NFTs, it is open to the publication of this type of games on its platform. Now, we will have to see how they implement it and what the rest of the competitors do about it.
