Valve Co-Founder and President Gabe Newell has given his two cents for getting the gaming world interested in NFTs and the Metaverse.
Gaben is doing the media rounds in support of Valve’s new Steam deck hardware. This has given him several opportunities to drop his hot views on the state of the industry. His comments come after Ban on NFTs and all blockchain games from the Steam platform. The move was well received by the CoCommunity but criticized by developers making blockchain games. This fed into the broader discussion that developers and publishers have around the concept of the “metaverse.”
In conversation with Eurogamer, Newell explained that Valve made its decision after noting that NFT and blockchain activity was “super sketchy” in some of those games. While he says blockchains are great as a form of technology, the way they are currently being used is not.
He goes on to say that the same problem has arisen when using cryptocurrencies. Newell points out that “50 percent of the cryptocurrency paid for transactions was fraudulent,” and the volatility of the currency meant people didn’t know how much they were paying for things on Steam. “Today you paid 99 cents for it,” explains Newell, “Tomorrow you’re going to pay 498 dollars for it, and that makes people super moody. So it just wasn’t a good method. The people who are currently active in this area are usually not good actors.”
In another interview, this time with PC gamer, Newell discusses his feelings on the “Metaverse.” He noted that there are a number of get-rich-quick schemes surrounding the topic. He’s saying what we’ve basically all thought by now: that what a lot of people are doing with the metaverse is nothing new. “You’ve obviously never played an MMO before. They say, ‘Oh, you’re going to have this customizable avatar.’ And it’s like, well… go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy XIV and tell me this isn’t a problem solved from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing you know you’re making up.”
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So basically, Gaben repeats what the gaming community has been screaming about in the past. Sure, it’s nothing new, but it’s reassuring to know that even some of the biggest names in the industry think current approaches to this technology are mostly financially predatory malarkey.
This article is republished by Kotaku Australia. read this original article.