It Sucks That Magic The Gathering NFTs Feel Inevitable

thegamer.com:

It's only a matter of time before Magic The Gathering gets into the NFT racket. It's already a game all about buying and owning cards that are worth far more than they reasonably should be, so the leap from that to buying and owning nothing at all and spending way too much on it isn't all that big.

It's a sword that's been hanging over the game ever since NFTs first became a thing. A stalemate between Wizards of the Coast, who ultimately wants to make money, the Magic community who want to just keep playing the game they love, and crypto grifters seeing the boom of TCGs in the last few years and getting dollar signs in their eyes.

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We already know that Wizards is thinking about it. A recent email from its lawyers demanding the cessation of the NFT-driven Magic format magicDAO stated that it is "currently evaluating its future regarding NFTs". Even with executives at Wizards like VP of design Aaron Forsyth pushing back against the idea on Twitter, a future where Hasbro doesn't want some kind of crypto bullshit seems impossible.

I adore TCGs, but they're years ahead of NFTs in the art of the grift. Thanks to all those non-recyclable packets, they're environmentally problematic (though both Flesh & Blood and Magic have recently experimented with more sustainable packaging). They have similar "to the moon'' speculative ideologies in their second-hand markets, which lead to scams and people hoarding stock and raiding McDonald's for their promos, hoping they'll flip them for a profit in the future. But even with all that in mind, the line between TCGs being physical game pieces and NFTs being literally nothing is a line any sensible person who hasn't been infested with