Epic Games Store To Shut Blockchain Games with ‘Bad Behavior’

Epic Games Store will not think twice about removing blockchain games whose developers or publishers demonstrate any form of “bad behavior,” a senior official has revealed. Given that its storefront has become the largest PC gaming platform that accepts such products after Steam announced a near-blanket ban on blockchain games in late 2021, the Fortnite maker’s evolving stance on the sector may influence the future of the entire niche. 

Together with Valve, Xbox has also previously expressed doubts about blockchain gaming. However, its opinions about NFTs and related technologies don’t match the fact that Microsoft just invested in the South Korean maker of crypto games Wemade. 

Despite this, one of its most popular franchises has already expressed a de facto disapproval of blockchain gaming in the wake of Mojang’s announcement that Minecraft won’t support it in the summer of 2022. Epic is perhaps the largest public advocate of this new technology among major game distributors, with Sony and Nintendo still seeming unsure about its gameplay possibilities.

Why does it matter

Why it matters: Despite the money and publicity surrounding them, most traditional gaming markets have prohibited 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 presently has five crypto games in its marketplace and is “near to 20” in the pipeline, Epic’s store GM Steve Allison says Axios. Epic neither produces nor publishes any. 

Blankos Block Party, a social multiplayer game by Mythical Games, debuted at Epic’s store in September as the first blockchain game on the market. 

Although Epic isn’t providing usage statistics, Allison stated that the game is “very well-played” and that the metaverse platform Core, another cryptocurrency game in the store, “does pretty well.”

Commercializing and prohibiting games

Square Enix, whose departing CEO recently stated the company plans to commercialize gaming applications of digital ledgers within a year, maybe the source of at least one of those planned blockchain games. Regarding this recent batch of releases, Allison claimed that Blakos 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 provide publishers complete control over blockchain transactions and fraud detection, it would seem that the Epic Games Store’s current limited adoption of this market is still very far from a given in the long run. Nevertheless, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney insists that Valve’s early prohibition of blockchain gaming had nothing to do with choosing the most consumer-friendly policy and was solely focused on preventing any game from being monetized by avoiding Steam’s 30% cut of all transactions, which is how decentralized systems function by nature.

Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.

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