The Steam Deck is out to positive reviews, and Valve’s Gabe Newell has been doing interviews to help promote the product. It’s almost inevitable for anyone of his stature doing an interview to be asked about the current state of NFTs and the metaverse and what his company plans to do to join the craze. When blockchain/NFT gaming took off, Valve took an early stance that it was not interested in including said games on its platform. And, if Valve president Gabe Newell’s recent comments indicate anything, it’s that the company is still uninterested in incorporating any of these ideas into its current strategy.
“The things that were being done were super sketchy,” said Newell. “And there was some illegal sh*t that was going on behind the scenes, and you’re just like, ‘yeah, this is bad.’ Blockchains as a technology are a great technology, that the ways in which has been utilized are currently are all pretty sketchy. And you sort of want to stay away from that… The people who are currently active in that space are not usually good actors.”
As far as the metaverse is concerned: “There’s a bunch of get-rich-quick schemes around metaverse,” he added. “Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. And they’ve apparently never played an MMO. They’re like, ‘Oh, you’ll have this customizable avatar.’ And it’s like, well… go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn’t a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you’re, you know, inventing.”
Very few people in this space will speak this frankly about the current gold rush situation when it comes to the blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse. However, it’s great to hear from an industry icon here to set the record straight.
The future of blockchain gaming and the metaverse remains hazy. Traditional publishers have been mostly scared away from offering NFTs in their games after massive, violent pushback from players whenever the issue comes up. Blockchain gaming remains its own space mostly occupied by crypto enthusiasts, not core gamers. And as for the metaverse? The main blockchain metaverses probably have no more than 10,000 DAUs combined, less than the top hundred games on Steam. Facebook is pushing for its VR-focused metaverse with Horizon, but few trust them to get it right, and they’ve already run into many privacy and harassment issues there.
(All information was provided by Forbes)
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