Epic Games Store shuts down blockchain games with ‘bad behavior’
The Epic Games Store won’t think twice about removing blockchain games if developers or publishers show any kind of “bad behavior,” a senior official has revealed. Given that the storefront has become the largest PC gaming platform to accept such products after Steam announced an almost blanket ban on blockchain games at the end of 2021, the Fortnite maker’s evolving attitude to the sector could affect the future of the entire niche.
Along with Valve, Xbox has also previously expressed doubts about blockchain gaming. But their opinions on NFTs and related technologies do not match the fact that Microsoft just invested in South Korean crypto game maker Wemade.
Despite this, one of the most popular franchises has already expressed a de facto disapproval of blockchain gaming in the wake of Mojang’s announcement that Minecraft will not support it in the summer of 2022. Epic is perhaps the biggest public champion of this new technology among major game distributors , with Sony and Nintendo still seeming uncertain about the gaming possibilities.
Why does it matter
Why it matters: Despite the money and publicity surrounding it, most traditional gaming markets have banned or excluded crypto-based games. As a result, one of their biggest testing grounds is now the store owned by the Fortnite developers.
Epic’s store currently has five crypto games on its marketplace and is “close to 20” in the pipeline, Epic store manager Steve Allison tells Axios. Epic neither produces nor publishes any.
Blanko’s Block Party, a social multiplayer game from Mythical Games, debuted on Epic’s store in September as the first blockchain game on the market.
Although Epic does not provide usage statistics, Allison stated that the game is “very well played” and that the metaverse platform Core, another cryptocurrency game on the store, is “doing pretty well.”
Commercialization and prohibition of gambling
Square Enix, whose outgoing CEO recently stated that the company plans to commercialize game applications of digital ledgers within a year, may be the source of at least one of the planned blockchain games. As for this latest batch of releases, Allison claimed that Blako’s Block Party, a free-to-play social sandbox that debuted in September 2022, is performing “very well” without providing specific download numbers.
Combining this with the fact that the developer of Fortnite continues to give publishers full control over blockchain transactions and fraud detection, it seems that the Epic Games Store’s current limited use of this market is still very far from a given in the long run. Nevertheless, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney insists that Valve’s early ban on blockchain games had nothing to do with choosing the most consumer-friendly policy and was solely focused on preventing any game from monetizing by avoiding Steam’s 30% cut off all transactions and that’s it. decentralized systems work by nature.
Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He has been a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralization, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.
