Fortnite Gaming Company Open to NFTs

Highlights

• Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney tweeted on Saturday that the mega gaming company would welcome games that include NFTs
• The announcement is in contrast to Sweeney’s earlier position that NFTs would not be included in Epic Games due to concerns about fraud in the NFT space
• The U-turn from Sweeney may be in response to rival gaming company, Valve, which recently declared that it would not allow games featuring NFTs to be sold on its Steam platform

The CEO of the gaming company behind one of the world’s largest online games, Fortnite, has said it’s open to games including NFTs (non fungible tokens).

Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney tweeted on Saturday that the mega gaming company would welcome games that include blockchain technology.

Sweeney includes a caveat, insisting that the blockchains involved to comply with the relevant laws and disclose their terms. Furthermore, he added that they must be age-rated.

What is Fortnite?

Fortnite is a free-to-play, cross platform, online game where players are dropped into an ever-shifting island and must battle other digital opponents to become the last man standing.

Launched in 2017, the online game has amassed 350 million users.

CEO’s Change of Heart

Tim Sweeney’s latest announcement raised some eyebrows of people who pointed out that Sweeney had, as recently as September, declared that NFTs would not be included in Epic Games due to concerns about fraud.

Last month, Sweeney stated Epic Games would not be pursuing NFTs for games like Fortnite, stating the field is "tangled up with scams."

Sweeney’s stance, at that time, was in opposition to other gaming companies, which had been actively pursuing NFTs in a variety of ways.

In April, Sega – the publisher of classic games like Sonic The Hedgehog - announced its support of NFTs.

This led to heavy criticism from fans due to the concerns NFTs pose to the environment. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of NFTs are located on the Ethereum network, which still uses a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to mine its tokens. PoW requires high energy consuming computers to solve complex mathematical problems.

NFT’s Surge in Popularity

The blockchain-supported tokens are currently experiencing a surge in popularity, with celebrities and major companies jumping on the bandwagon.

On Friday, former NBA superstar, Shaquille O’Neil released his own set of non fungible tokens. The collection, called “Shaquille O’Neal: The Eras of Dominance Collection” will run on Ethernity – an Ethereum layer two platform.

In August, credit card giant, Visa, announced the purchase of a CryptoPunk for US$150,000.

Image Source © Jjfarq | Megapixl.com

Epic Game’s CEO Current NFT Stance

On Friday, Sweeney sent out a tweet stating, blockchain technology is simply a distributed transactional database with a decentralised business model that encourages investment in hardware to expand the database’s capacity. He also added this technology has value whether or not a particular use of it succeeds or fails.

The U-turn from Sweeney may be in response to rival gaming company, Valve, which recently declared that it would not allow games featuring NFTs to be sold on its Steam platform.