Tim Sweeney, the head of Epic Games, has stated that, unlike Steam, they will not be banning games using this technology and the blockchain from the Epic Games Store (from now on, we’ll abbreviate it: EGS).
This topic has come up because Mojang recently announced that they don’t want to see NFTs in Minecraft (we wrote about it), and a user asked Sweeney what he thought. Sweeney responded on Twitter, and his answer was to the point.
“Developers should be free to decide how to build their games, and you can decide whether to play them. I believe stores and operating system makers shouldn’t interfere by forcing their views onto others. We definitely won’t,” so they will not have a say in the EGS availability of NFT blockchain games.
Sweeney added, “A store could choose to make no such judgments and host anything legal, or choose to draw the line at acceptable mainstream norms as we do, or accept only games that conform to the owner’s personal beliefs.” They have chosen the middle option and do not ban NFT games outright.
Speaking of EGS, a look back: in 2020, it offered 103 games for free, but that number dropped to 89 last year (and there have been instances of free games reappearing in this form earlier this year). Currently, there are two games available for free: one is Tannenberg, a World War I FPS, and the other is Shop Titans, an RPG shop simulator. These are available from July 28 (it requires an Epic Games account and the Epic Games Launcher for PC).
Next week’s free game will be Lawn Mowing Simulator (yes, you read that correctly: a lawn mowing simulator) from July 28 to August 4. Perhaps they have run out of ideas for the summer.
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