Team17 give up on NFT plans, EA says they’re ‘not currently focused’ on them

metro.co.uk:

The message seems to slowly be getting through to publishers that the majority of gamers are not interested in NFTs.

NFT announcements have already established a very predictable pattern, where an NFT scheme is announced, gamers react against it, and then a day or two later it gets cancelled.

It happened with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and Troy Baker and now it’s happening with Team17 and their Worms game, which were only announced on Monday but have already been dropped.

Not only were fans against the idea but the indie publisher’s own developers were caught unawares, with several of them threatening to boycott the company unless they gave up their NFT plans.

‘We have listened to our Teamsters, development partners, and our games’ communities, and the concerns they’ve expressed, and have therefore taken the decision to step back from the NFT space’, said Team17 in a statement on Twitter.

What seems to have changed their mind is that Going Under developer Aggro Crab vowed never to work with them again. Overcooked maker Ghost Town Game didn’t go quite that far but they did indicate that they’re strongly against NFTs in any form.

Ubisoft was also forced to rethink their plans for NFTs, although in their case they’ve already vowed to go back to them later. Atari seem entirely unrepentant about their NFT lootbox combos, while Konami is likely to continue with them given how much money they’ve already made with theirs.

EA though, seems to be taking a more cautious stance, after previously describing NFTs as the ‘future of the industry’.

Speaking during an earnings call last night, CEO Andrew Wilson compared NFTs to concepts such as 3D and AR, which were popular buzzwords for investors but struggled to be seen as anything more than a fad.

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