This has led to gray market issues such as skin gambling, and so publishers typically have shied away from allowing players to earn real-world funds from games.
Axiom Zen feared that Ethereum would further struggle after they launched the mobile version of the game, particularly with an influx of users from China.
Players could make in-game items by using the game's toolbox and then sell them, using a game-specific cryptocurrency, to others who could display them in their virtual landscapes.
Such games tended to focus on using blockchain for speculation instead of more traditional forms of gameplay, and this offers limited appeal to most players.
[11] By the end of 2021, several major publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Take Two Interactive, and Square Enix, stated that blockchain and NFT-based games were under serious consideration for their companies in the future.
[14] Valve's CEO Gabe Newell explained in a later interview that while he believed blockchain technology was legitimate, the company felt there were too many bad actors in the market at the time to allow cryptocurrency or NFTs onto Steam.
[21] French trade union Solidaires Informatique criticized Ubisoft's plan for Quartz, stating that blockchain technology is "harmful, worthless, and without future", and that it is "a useless, costly, ecologically mortifying tech which doesn't bring anything to videogames".
[25][26] In December 2021, Peter Molyneux announced that his development studio 22cans's planned business simulation game Legacy would include a cryptocurrency called "LegacyCoin", based on the Ethereum blockchain.
[27] Prior to release, speculators could purchase in-game items as NFTs, and sales reached $50 million within a few days of Molyneux's announcement.
[32][33] This announcement was partly in response to an unconfirmed rumor that online publishing platform Gumroad would become involved with NFTs, which was met with widespread backlash from users.
[36] Square Enix committed more to blockchain game support, intending to bring the technology to the Final Fantasy series and also announcing new IP named Symbiogenesis built around NFTs.
[38] Xbox head executive Phil Spencer said in regards to blockchain games "that some of the creative that I see today feels more exploitative than about entertainment".
[44] Competing developers of "step-to-earn" games—fitness games that reward cryptocurrency for walking—rushed to accuse each other of being Ponzi schemes while simultaneously working toward "solutions to their Ponzinomics problem".
One developer, StepN, admitted that play-to-earn games require a constant supply of new players or else their token economy would collapse.