Title: Minecraft Game Developers Prohibit NFTs from Appearing in the Game

The research team behind Minecraft, one of the most popular games of all time, announced today that it will not support NFTs. The game had been touted as a potential use case for NFTs, making the stance of the game owned by Microsoft on blockchain technology potentially significant for developers like this.

"NFTs do not include all of our community and create a scenario with and without," Mojang, Minecraft's developer, wrote on its website. "Speculative psychology and pricing around NFTs detract from gameplay and encourage profit-taking, which we believe does not align with the long-term enjoyment and success of players."

Impact on NFT Worlds Game Title After Minecraft Developer's Statement

As Mojang hinted in its note, some companies have tried to build Minecraft NFT businesses. The Polygon-based NFT Worlds is the most prominent example, selling virtual land NFTs that can be used on custom Minecraft servers.

NFT Worlds explained on its website: "Leveraging Minecraft and its extensive open-source ecosystem, NFT Worlds is built on a decade-long platform of open-source development." The project also develops games for earning, paying their own cryptocurrency $WRLD every 30 minutes you play.

In the past 24 hours, the floor price of NFT Worlds has dropped about 66%.

"This unintentional announcement by Microsoft/Minecraft about banning all activities using NFTs and blockchain technology that could be in Minecraft is like a step backward in innovation and could even cause long-term painful consequences for them," an NFT Worlds developer wrote in a Discord announcement, posted on Twitter.

NFT Worlds developers said their first action would be to contact Minecraft to understand the reasons behind their decision and how they enforce these policies on their existing platform. If Minecraft doesn't budge, they will explore other options. As briefly explained in the Discord announcement, one option would be for NFT Worlds to run on a game tool similar to Minecraft. A second option would be to transition to a "platform as a service" model for other developers to replicate on their existing technology.

"Immediately following the news of Minecraft's development team's statement, we had several other metaverse/gamefi projects immediately contacting us wanting to use this technology we've proven, strongly launching the possibility of applying such a platform," NFT Worlds noted.

In an increasingly volatile cryptocurrency market, some non-cryptocurrency gaming companies have backed off their web3 investments. Ubisoft launched a blockchain-based game last year called Quartz, which has performed quite poorly to date. Additionally, the $625 million Axie Infinity hack incident still looms ahead.

The speculative, hackable nature of some blockchain-based projects seems to be tarnishing Minecraft's credibility. However, despite the company's stance, some language in its letter doesn't seem overly negative toward blockchain technology.

They expressed concern that third-party NFTs may not be trustworthy and could cost players. They also noted concern that implementing Minecraft entirely built on blockchain technology could disappear without notice — meaning players would lose their investments.

"We will also pay attention to how blockchain technology evolves over time to determine whether it allows for safer experiences or other practical and comprehensive applications in the game," Mojang wrote. "However, we have no plans to implement blockchain technology into Minecraft right now."