Gamers: 1, NFTs: 0

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. It’s a brand new week. Celsius’ antics continue. The bankrupt crypto lender is nowhere close to repaying investors, but has found ~$3 million to pay in employee bonuses. The Trustee supervising the bankruptcy has opposed the plan. 

Moving on, today we talk about why gamers dislike NFTs, and Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter 2.0. 

The markets stayed in positive territory. Bitcoin was at $20,900 levels while Ethereum crossed $1,630. Nasdaq rose on improvement in earnings. Back home, Sensex and Nifty gained on FII buying. 

Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash

Why Gamers Detest NFTs

Picture this. You pay $70 for a Call of Duty game. Add to that $10-20 each for in-game purchases such as weapon blueprints and vehicle skins, and another $10-15 for operator skins. Now wouldn’t you be annoyed if there was an NFT cost charged on top of all these expenses? That’s what gamers are concerned about. 

It is not a one-time charge either. The pay-to-play nature of NFTs has irritated gamers because it means they’ll need to pay at every stage in the game. Plus, NFT prices are extremely volatile and cannot be easily transferred across games or platforms. 

Video gamers have made their dislike for NFTs very public. Whenever popular games have mentioned NFTs, gamers have come together and opposed these plans. In many cases, gamers have won. 

What drove the rift?Until 2021, online games meant video games. Then came the blockchain era. Play-to-earn games got popular with Axie Infinity’s entry. Then came NFT tokens within games. Game developers saw this as a power boost: an additional revenue opportunity. Gamers, on the other hand, saw red. 

NFTs were just like in-game collectibles. Marketplaces claimed that these were yours to keep forever. But for gamers, NFTs only meant more buying and selling, which in turn would make gaming more about business than entertainment. 

Gamers protested openly and developers had to reverse their NFT proposals. For instance, Ukraine’s GSC Game World dropped its plan of introducing NFTs in its game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in December 2021 following backlash from gamers. 

Costs and climate Gamers cite two major problems with NFTs plugged into games:

1. Expenses: Playing video games already costs money. When NFTs are added to this equation, the expenses shoot up further. There are also issues around NFT pricing and their true worth in the future. 

2. Environment: NFTs run on blockchains that need power. While the most-popular NFT blockchain Ethereum has switched to proof-of-stake and reduced 99% energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions from the crypto industry are still a concern.  

A high stakes gameWhether it is Activision, its acquirer Microsoft, Sony, or Tencent, developers cannot stay out of touch with the gaming community. Because it is this community that drives revenues for the companies, and has the potential to force other players to quit. 

Some members of this gaming world have earned the reputation of being anti-crypto. Nick Kaman’s video-game studio Aggro Crab, for example, mocks crypto as part of its brand image. So when the game’s publisher Team17 tried to sell NFTs, Kaman denounced it and threatened to part ways in February 2022. Many other studios joined forces, and Team17 withdrew its NFT plans soon after.  

While some gaming companies stood their ground, their NFT sales are dismal. Video game company Ubisoft, for instance, launched Ghost Recon NFTs. Its partner NFT marketplace Rarible has managed to sell just 78 Ghost Recon NFTs for a total amount of $3,900. 

Can they be won over?Game developers have taken a step back on NFTs. Microsoft-owned Mojang Studios decided to not support or allow NFTs in its all-time popular game Minecraft. Ubisoft has halted updates to Ghost Recon, and has hit pause on new launches. 

Gamers have won this round, at least for now. 

Elon’s Dream Twitter 

It has happened. Elon Musk has taken over Twitter. His first moves? Sacking CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy head Vijaya Gadde. On the table now are a thousand questions and all eyes are on what the SpaceX founder will do with the world’s most popular microblogging platform. 

Source: Comic by Twitter engineer Manu Cornet 

What we knowMusk has grand plans. Getting Donald Trump back on the platform is on top of his agenda. Making Twitter a “free speech platform” is another priority. There is also his promise of fixing Twitter’s bots issue. 

Some are excited by Musk’s superapp plans for Twitter. The “everything app” will be named, simply, X. Vox calls it the “closest thing he has to a real business strategy”. 

But there’s panic too. Twitter is losing its active users. Many more Twitterati will exit the platform if Musk makes more radical changes. Let’s see if the Musk takeover leads to something to be chirpy about. 

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