Minecraft will continue to be about blocks and not about the blockchain. That’s according to a new official blog post from Microsoft subsidiary Mojang which emphasizes that “integrations of NFTs with Minecraft is generally not something we would support or allow.”
While players have long been able to charge for access to private Minecraft servers they control, the company’s usage guidelines emphasize that “all players must have access to the same functionality” on those servers. It conflicts with the main point of NFTs, which Mojang characterizes as “digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which is inconsistent with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together.”
Aside from those kinds of philosophical issues, Mojang also expresses concerns about “cases where NFTs were sold at artificially or fraudulently inflated prices” and situations where NFT assets “may require an asset manager that can disappear without notice.” These kinds of issues mean that “some third-party NFTs may not be reliable and may end up costing players who purchase them,” Mojang warns.
As such, Mojang writes that “blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated into our client and server applications, nor can Minecraft in-game content such as worlds, skins, persona elements or other mods can be used by blockchain technology to create a scarce digital resource.” This move comes just weeks after Mojang announced that it has begun banning violent players from all online gaming , including private servers.
Mojang leaves a hint of a door open for future NFT applications that could “allow for safer experiences or other practical and inclusive applications in games.” However, the company has “no plans to implement blockchain technology in Minecraft right now.”
An external carpet cover?
Mojang’s announcement is incredibly impactful for projects like NFT Worlds, which sell NFTs tied to the world seeds used to craft specific Minecraft map. OpenSea data shows total NFT Worlds trading volume of over 50,000 ETH (worth $76 million at current exchange rates) since launch last October, with individual world tokens selling for an average of around 2.5 ETH (about $3,700 today) .
However, daily trading of NFT World tokens has been falling for months along with the broader crypto crash in recent months. And the price of the cryptocurrency that powers the NFT Worlds project cratered nearly 70 percent immediately after Mojang’s announcement on Wednesday.
In a public statementthe leaders of the NFT Worlds project expressed confidence in the future despite what it called an “out of nowhere announcement from Microsoft/Minecraft [that] feels like a step back in innovation and may even have painful downstream effects for them in the long run.”
The NFT Worlds team says it is brainstorming next steps and reaching out to decision makers at Mojang to see if “we can find an alternative outcome that is favorable to Minecraft player base as well as Microsoft’s vested interest in blockchain/NFT technology and GameFi.” If an arrangement cannot be found and NFT Worlds is indeed barred from interacting with Minecraftthe team says it will “pivot,” either to its own “Minecraft-like game engine & games platform” or to become a “GameFi platform as a service” for other studios looking for their own turnkey NFT/metaverse solutions.
“Bottom line, we’re not leaving,” the team writes. “We have the community, we have the poorest, and we know we can build.”
