Atari Combines NFTs with Lootboxes for its 50th Anniversary
Atari has made gaming history many times in the last half a century, and to celebrate this momentous occasion it has announced a new system that combines lootboxes with NFTs. The controversial decision is set to combine the Metaverse with «giftable» artwork celebrating Atari titles released over the last 50 years.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have been increasingly mentioned among media outlets and celebrities throughout the past year, with many game companies making plans to incorporate them. Atari is teaming up with «NFT real estate developers» Republic Realm to realize this plan, selling off its artistic gaming collection to traders.
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Atari CEO Wade Rosen said in a statement: “The Atari brand is synonymous with video games, and video gaming is the backbone of the metaverse." This sounds promising to users and traders, but Atari's proposal means it has put itself at the centre of the ongoing NFT controversy. Dubbed «GFTs», Atari's anniversary plan promotes the idea of multiple gift purchases with different rarities, similar to the drop rate of lootboxes being common, rare, ultra-rare, or similar variations thereof. The drop rates and real money required to purchase lootboxes, however, has led to comparisons of gambling being promoted for gamers.
NFTs are «owned» when a person buys them on the blockchain, named for the automated algorithm generated via popular cryptocurrency networks such as Ethereum. Much of its criticism comes from the blockchain requiring a lot of electricity and energy to generate for the sake of artificially scarce products. Recent findings estimate 48 kWh is used to generate one NFT blockchain, which is the equivalent to 1.5
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