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“You’re welcome”
Just a friendly reminder, as sarcastic as it sounds with the “good job internet”, this article is sincerely praising how people across the internet made many game studios and publishers reconsider and avoid using NFTs in games, comparing it to how internet buzz brought legislative attention to loot boxes in games.
I can’t believe anyone thought NFTs were a good idea to begin with.
Conceptually NFTs could be useful.
The use case of “buy funny pictures” was the stupidest grift yet
Been paying attention and haven’t seen a single use case for them that isn’t covered better by other less wasteful and more standard technology
Only if you stretch the definition to the point where you’re calling someone’s Steam inventory a set of NFTs - yeah, it’s a digital record of unique(ish) games & items, but the “on the blockchain” part was the whole thing that defined NFTs. Every single supposed use case I saw for them relied on pretending that a legal problem (licensing, mostly) was a technical limitation.
This guy gets it. Gamers want NFTs but they don’t know it because they don’t know what NFTs are
They are the perfect tool of digital capitalism
They create artificial scarcity
The artists who became millionaires from selling NFTs still think it’s awesome.
Bag holders trying to offload crypto wanted it to be good.
Companies did
Anybody who supports small artists that make art for video games so they can get a cut of the profit across multiple platforms and games.
This guy gets it
PC Gamer is anti NFT. That headline is not sarcastic, it’s actual praise.
Definitely anti-NFT.
Oh good, I was worried!
(also being genuine here)
The internet did something right for once.
The Internet also created the problem in the first place.
Not the Internet. Just a couple of greedy scammers who tried to sell air to the people. Internet is a tool, not a cause .
NFTs were a weirdly mainstream thing. They happened on the internet, as a conduit, but the primary buyers were normie types who think phone apps are for getting laid, they all thought they were buying the next Bitcoin, it was their turn to get wealthy overnight. Instagram got pretty heavily involved, and you know how us neckbeard Redditor types love our Instagram feeds.
The Internet, as an actual community, was against them from the jump. The Redditors, of all people, were one of the first really tech-savvy crews to raise the public alarm, saying yeah, I’m a guy who does computers AND finance for a living, I’ve looked into this from every angle, it doesn’t make sense. I’d stay out of it if I were you, and watch out for your loved ones. Rare Reddit W on that.
The artsy blue haired pronouns of Tumblr hated NFTs from the jump, because scammers started stealing their work pretty much immediately. Everyone on Twitter who wasn’t an NFT shill despised them. NFTs had immediate douchebag energy.
None of us were really down with NFTs, ever. They smelled scammy as hell, and anybody who said boo about them got dismissed as an out of touch old person, even if they were 23.
Some witty person called them “astrology for men” or something like that. The Internet was already burned out from crypto bros by the time NFTs showed up. We were born done with their bullshit.
The crescendo was Dan Olsen’s Line Goes Up, a Youtube explainer on NFTs for people who were honestly pretty savvy about them already.
His deep dive uncovered the truth, which is that all the endless hype was coming from heavily moderated scammer Discords, which were conveniently filled by the Call of Duty players of the world who didn’t fuck with the rest of the internet, they were mainstream white guys, mostly, sports fans, regular types. They were all pretty fucking ignorant about technology, on average, and didn’t have the tuned bullshit meter to stay out of NFTs. Again, they all thought they were riding the rocket to the moon, so they could finally sing along to the rap songs about their first milly and mean it.
None of them were really FROM the internet, they were all outside guys, people who were too cool for the rest of it, here for the pussy and the money, bro, you know? Inside the scammer Discords, where they spent all their time, absolutely nobody was allowed to ask any of the very reasonable questions that a person might ask about a potential investment. All of that was FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, an instant ban, fuck your negativity, bro. Nobody was allowed to ask, do or say anything that might halt the hype train.
Everyone who realized they were scammed also realized the only way out of the scam was to keep the hype up and sell their stupid NFT to a greater fool for more money, so the hype was REALLY hard, everyone was trying to pull in a sucker so they could cash out. That, right there, was the missing fact that the rest of The Internet was waiting on, and it was a huge “Ah Ha” moment for everyone when Olsen dropped that bomb. Finally, the explanation for the giant hype about something that appeared to be completely worthless. Now it makes sense.
It was a cult, and the only people really profiting were the scambros who realized they could just pull fraud after fraud after fraud with rugpulls that didn’t really count as fraud, since lawmakers were still in the “what the fuck is an NFT” phase of lawmaking. It was INCREDIBLY profitable for scammers, they were selling air, even when their projects “failed” no they didn’t, actually, the scammers walked away with thousands, even millions. The chumps got nothing. It was free money, a scammer feeding frenzy.
So you had a bunch of fuckin dudes who barely had a grasp on their iPhones throwing all their money at something that was puzzling to the people who work with computers full-time for a living. Like Olsen said, you don’t “get it” because there’s nothing TO get, if you “get it” you’re being taken by the scam. It’s literally confusing to you because you aren’t stupid enough. It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t make sense, it’s a scam.
Those mainstream, barely work an iPhone guys were getting ripped off left and fucking right. I guess you could just drop things into other people’s NFT wallets with no security so that when your target clicked on the thing to see what it was it triggered some code that emptied his entire wallet into yours, bye bye money, bye bye apes. It was a complete shitshow. That issue never got “fixed” because it was fundamental to how the whole blockchain of it worked, there was no fixing it. Nobody got their money back. Nobody got caught or charged for their thefts. It was a bloodbath.
Axie Infinity turned into digital sharecropping, a whole new way to fuck the poor in the Global South, it’s just, everything NFTs touched turned to evil fucking poison.
DAOs never, ever worked. Not like they were supposed to.
Meanwhile, they were trying to shove NFTs into everything, either because they didn’t get it, or because they DEFINITELY got it, this was better than Team Fortress hats, you could get these morons to pay their life savings for all kinds of nothing. It was better than lootboxes and that takes doing.
The Internet, the actual community, was getting angrier and angrier about it, because we were never on board with this shit in the first place. It was a truly rare moment of solidarity for us all, Twitter feminists and Reddit techbros on the same wavelength, for just this once. They were going to turn everything into a fuckin NFT. They were talking about turning your ID and professional licenses and everything else into this horrible, horrible scam. Never mind the vidya games, they had MUCH bigger targets in sight, bad news everywhere. Everyone who wasn’t stupid said “hell to the fuck no”, and we fought. For once, we actually won. I don’t know if we ever deserved any credit - aside from Dan Olsen - but we won.
And in the end, you get this stupid asshole in the article, all sad like we fucked up a good thing, so I guess he was one of the mainstream dipshits who thought we should all have our lives run by a DAO. Fuck you dude. Sorry you lost the chance to sell us nothing for everything. Man, think of all those kids, what a juicy crop of chumps. No wonder you’re a sad monkey.
Oh, and I don’t have sauce, but years later I think it came out that the guy behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club is a Nazi because of course he is.
We dodged a bullet on NFTs, and I’m still not sure if we’re safe. That was a GOOD scam, and everyone is a scammer, now, especially corporations. The best scams are the ones the rubes can’t opt out of, so maybe if they just remove the “opt out” part. They’re still thinking, still looking for a way back in. Fucking stupid monkeys.
Nice summary of the sad, pathetic history of NFTs. That Dan Olsen video is great, highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Great rant! I really appreciated it. Much like crypto, as soon as I heard about NFTs, I just kinda shrugged my shoulders and turned away because I have a good, stable job that I enjoy. Every so often I can splurge and buy myself something special. I don’t need to be out there hustling to buy and sell things that ultimately have zero value in my world. It’s all just so dumb.
The article’s author is dead against NFTs if he’s the stupid asshole you’re referencing.
The problem was it resonated with all the people who missed out on Bitcoin and we’re hoping to join in on the next hot pyramid scheme.
Blockchain is conceptually cool as shit, but managing to produce a product that doesn’t end up being a pyramid scheme with it is neigh impossible
Not that I disagree with you, but in this case that’d mean the internet didn’t do shit to get rid of NFTs too so the article’s already on the wrong foot
Whoever thinks this is a problem needs to be bullied more.
I literally forgot about NFTs until seeing this post.
At first glance NFTs in games seem to make sense. For example take a digital trading card game, might be pretty cool to hold ownership of your cards outside the game and be free to exchange them with other players with no restrictions, right?
But then you have to think a step further: The card is useless without the game. If the game shuts down? Nobody can use the card. If the game decides in two years that the card you own is too powerful and they forbid it from tournament play? Well, wasted money.
So overall you might be able to prove ownership of a “card”, but without the context of the game it’s meaningless data. And the game has to decide itself what your card means and what it can do. So we’re back to simply using a normal database inside the game to hold your cards giving the same benefits (without the headache of NFTs).
The argument that you could use the card or the item in another game is bullshit on top. The other game would have to implement every item, which they simply won’t do. So NFTs in the gaming niche are overall bullshit.
A game developer could easily link a trading card to an account. There’s no need whatsoever to use an NFT for that.
And if you want to use them in 3rd party games too? The game developer could sign a list of cards you own which you can import. No need for a blockchain.
Why would developers allow that? They’re capitalists and want to lock you inside their platforms
If you’re a scammer it sounds amazing. Otherwise, something like the steam market is way better.
You wouldnt have to implement every item, youd just have to make a default option for things that do not have an implementation for a game.
A similar example of how it would work irl is how Amiibos work. In Smash, a link amiibo would use a link AI, in zelda, it can spawn rare materials or spawn Epona in BOTW/TOTK. Scan a link amiibo in like Animal Crossing itll tell you not supported. In fire emblem games, generic ammibos with no special effects drop random material
How amiibos work for specifcally smash. As its the only one that writes data to the NFC chip, is sort of like NFTs for gaming, but a physical product. No one else has your specific AI (unless you dumped it)
All your examples still go back to each and every game having to implement that item. There is no “default option”.
And if every game has to implement each item… they can just leave items out. Or block them. Or say they are invalid. Or change them (buffs/nerfs). So you might think you are holding a unique item that only belongs to you, but in reality it’s worth nothing as it can be removed with one click from any game you might want to use it in.
Which makes an NFT not an ounce better than having that item in the game’s database.
It wouldnt, because in the case of amiibos, each is just an ID stored in the NFC chip, the only implementation they would need to do is during something like a switch case check in programming, if none of the implemented cases are detected, then it would default to the default option, it doesnt need to be specific to the said amiibo, it just needs to not be in thr ID list that is not already inplemented. The non implemented path is the “default” option. What other term would you even refer to for the specific case where it is NOT the case.
Your whole situation is more or less is how konami implemented yugioh cards in its early games.
The “default option” you bring up is useless. What value does it have if I “own” a playing card ID, but the card isn’t implemented in 9 out of 10 games? And the tenth game shuts down after a year, so now my card can’t be used anywhere. It’s idiotic.
As it’s just an ID I probably don’t even have any card image or stats or whatever, it’s a worthless value in a database (blockchain in this case).
It isnt useless as in some cases, amiibos would provide material, albeit its less valuable than the ones implemented, it does serve a function. In the context of yugioh, they were only implemented for the first few gameboy/gba games till the code feature dropped off entirely.
I’m still talking about NFTs here, not Amiibos… and in the case of an NFT you don’t even get a physical object to look at.
It baffles me that people still try to defend the point of NFTs in multiple games. What is the motivation do you think there is for Amiibos to work across those games? Those are all first party Nintendo games, so they still are making money off of it.
Where the hell is the motivation to get your legendary dong slayer sword to work in call of duty? Why would they want to support that? They don’t, and it makes no sense why they ever would.
Again, it’s different with Amiibos because they’re all developed by Nintendo companies, and Nintendo can force them to do that. You’re also getting actual merchandise and something you can hold on to instead of a digital receipt.
You make it sound like I was pro NFT (im not), im just saying NFT-like usage already exists without the use of NFTs or not.
Ya and Amiibos are shit. It’s more expensive ways for pay to win.
But at least you get a physical thing when you buy an Amiibo. My daughter used to buy them just because she liked the figures, she didn’t even care about the game part. With the NFTs, you get… a picture anyone else can duplicate on their own computer
We don’t need your money laundering scam involved in games.
No look, bro. You just don’t understand. NFTs mean that if I buy a Fortnite skin, then I OWN that skin. That means I can use it in Diablo. Trust me, bro. It’s the future.
/s in case the multiple “bros” wasn’t enough
Didn’t realize we could bully a jpeg
You can’t bully a jpg. You can, however, bully a link to a jpg that you don’t actually possess.
You clearly haven’t seen weebs then :D
Not a jpeg… a receipt, with a link, to a copy, of a jpeg (that you don’t own any rights to).
Cool.
This means we must have diverged from the worst timeline.
I guess that’s proof right there that things could have been worse
The NFT people were sending death threats to content creators and artists speaking out against NFTs. I don’t think we were the ones doing the bullying.
I disagree with the use of the word ‘bullying’ implying that they would’ve happened otherwise. NFTs in video games would never have happened, because they don’t do anything that publishers weren’t already doing.
I see this as an absolute win
Gigantic W
