NFTs and blockchain technology will no longer be authorized to “integrate” with Minecraft, as per Microsoft-owned Mojang. This is a severe blow for NFT Worlds, which has spent months crafting a comprehensive crypto-economy on top of a bundle of the randomly generated seeds needed to design unique Minecraft landscapes.

However, it will be “entirely untethered from the policy enforcement Microsoft and Mojang have had over Minecraft,” according to the NFT Worlds. The company’s development team has said they will make a new game “based on many of the key features of Minecraft.” 

NFT Worlds says that its upcoming game will be developed “from the ground up” to understand the players of the original Minecraft. However, this time it will include modernization and active development that Minecraft has been missing for years.

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No reason to feel dejected, exciting things lined up

The NFT Worlds team guarantees that the game will always be free to play and that users will not require a credit card to buy new content. Instead, it is anticipated that players will use the NFT Worlds token, whose value has plunged by over 60% in the week since Mojang’s disclosure.

A Microsoft representative confirmed to Vice that for the time being, players who own an NFT world created by NFT Worlds can still utilize that world’s random seed to play in Minecraft or even host multiplayer sessions on that map. 

The NFT itself never granted exclusive rights to the map, just as writing “World 1-1” on a piece of paper does not grant ownership rights to the iconic Super Mario Bros. level, thus that doesn’t really mean anything.

The NFT Worlds team claims that the next clone they develop might give preference to “backward compatibility with current Minecraft server development plugins and methods.” The team encourages developers to “continue building NFT Worlds content” on top of Minecraft since it will be playable with the revamped and revised NFT Worlds game whenever it is available.

Is this a web 2 vs web3 battle?

This recent rift is now being portrayed as “a technical conflict” over who will have ownership of digital assets between two opposing visions of the future of the web – the web2 and web3. The group positions itself as a guardian of “the spirit of creativity through independent creators” and views Microsoft as a profit-driven giant that will almost always act in the interests of its shareholders and balance sheet at the expense of innovation, player experience, and creators.

On the other hand, according to a statement made by Mojang last week, platforms like NFT Worlds encourage “systems of digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion. This does not align with the values of Minecraft wherein creative inclusiveness and cooperative play is prioritized. 

However, after reading NFT Worlds’ statement, it’s difficult to avoid getting the impression that the forced separation was the result of a lot of “sour grapes” thinking.  NFT Worlds was content to find a way to create a crypto empire on top of an immensely well-liked videogame that had over 141 million users worldwide until late 2021. 

Where are things heading at the moment? Which side are you on? Leave your comments below and let us know. 

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