The American video-game developer Valve Corporation has barred blockchain games that allow issuing or exchanging cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from its Steam store.
We chose to be upfront about blockchain gaming & NFTs. As a result, we finally lost the battle with Steam. While I’m disappointed for Age of Rust being removed, the point is more to the fact that Blockchain games as whole are going to be removed. This is setback for all.
2/4— Age of Rust (@SpacePirate_io) October 14, 2021
According to the developers of the game Age of Rust from SpacePirate Games, the decision is linked to Steam’s ban on artefacts that have real-world value.
At this point, we will put our energy back into gamedev, creating more NFTs, & empowering the community than try to fight Steam alone. We will continue to publish our @madewithunity game elsewhere. We are moving forward, we ❤ NFTs, we ❤ @enjin, and ❤ our community. Onward!
4/4 pic.twitter.com/HoTYp4EogL— Age of Rust (@SpacePirate_io) October 14, 2021
Steam is the largest, but not the only online game store. The platform’s main competitor, Epic Games Store, stated in a comment to The Verge that it is \”open to games with support for cryptocurrency and blockchain-based assets\”.
The company is also prepared to operate in the NFT space with \”some caveats\”. Such games would have to comply with financial laws, carry age ratings, and use their own payment systems rather than the platform’s built-in payment service.
Earlier, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the platform was not interested in NFTs. On October 16 he spoke positively about \”innovations in technology and finance\” and noted the benefits of blockchain.
As a technology, the blockchain is just a distributed transactional database with a decentralized business model that incentivize investment in hardware to expand the database’s capacity. This has utility whether or not a particular use of it succeeds or fails.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) October 15, 2021
Enjin, the blockchain company, invited Tim Sweeney to \”have a chat\”.
Disappointed to see short-sighted decisions that are directly impacting our adopters like @SpacePirate_io.@TimSweeneyEpic @EpicGames let’s chat? https://t.co/oQ8Y9OScS8
— Enjin (@enjin) October 15, 2021
In January 2019, Retail Row, a shop specialising in Fortnite-themed merchandise from Epic Games, began accepting Monero (XMR) as payment. According to Sweeney, this happened by accident.
In 2018, media reports, citing a Valve employee, suggested plans to launch a blockchain platform to collect information about players.
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