The Epic Store’s first NFT-based video game looks crappy

Developers and publishers make Epic Games his official foray into crypto With grita battle royale game by blockchain video game company Gala Games.

Previously, Epic Games clashed with video game marketplace Steam, which took one firm no-NFT stance in 2021. Epic Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said then that “Epic Games Store welcomes games that utilize blockchain technology, provided they comply with relevant laws, disclose their terms, and are age-rated by an appropriate group.” And now the company does. It really does.

gala games was announced at his Galaverse conference on June 6th that it had “signed a partnership with Epic.” There grit was created by Team Grit not Gala Games (although the two separate companies entered into a “partnership” in February), the game is currently listed as an Early Access game on Steam also. This listing is free of any reference to Web3, crypto or the blockchain and has not been updated as of January 25th. when Team Grit announced a delay and before it collaborated with Gala. Gala Games did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Gala Games partnership with Epicthen marked grit‘s official online release. Gala hinted in his presentation that there would eventually be more blockchain games on the platform, despite every title Gala Games currently has lists on his website is either in development, in beta or in “testing” phase. You’ll probably have to wait a bit for the crypto gods to descend and turn all games into a buttcoin worth two whole cents.

“grit will be one of the very first [NFT-based] Play on the Epic Games Store,” said Gala Games at Galaverse. “This is the moment when everything is going to change, and everyone is going to find out that…why would you play a game where you don’t own what you buy in the game?”

Great question. I can think of a few reasons.

grit is a remarkably beige battle royale set in the wild, wild west. You can shoot other players with guns and ride NFT horses, according to a Twitter user pointed out that these were asset flips

— or at least the horse that Gala put in an “epic chest” at Galaverse is a loyal asset flip.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with asset flipping, an often reducing term this refers to the time, money, and hair-saving practice of using prebuilt assets in game development, but advertising prebuilt assets as “epic” feels kind of shoddy. It’s particularly gross that Gala seems to frame these flips as limited-edition NFTs, since you can already buy them on the Unreal Engine marketplace, plug them into Unity, and melt them down into a giant horse king who obsessively believes in trickle-down economics ( the Horse King was stuck somewhere between Unity and narrowly escaping the blockchain in a Jordan Peterson podcast). There’s nothing exclusive, innovative, or particularly exciting about getting players to buy an asset flip for 8,000 buttcoin.

In fact, it’s impossible to see what’s different grit from an NFT-free, visually meatier survival western like the Red Dead Redemption

games. They’re noticeably less beige and blocky, but most importantly, they also contain weapons and horses.

gritEpic Games’ description on the Epic Games Store provides an opaque definition of crypto’s role in the game, describing it as “the world’s first web3 battle royale” with “an economy based on ownership and rewards.” We have little insight into the gameplay apart from one anemic follower and a Twitter video proving it grit is not only beige, but was probably made by an eighth grader who had nothing better to do after school. The texture and shading looks like something a tween might produce after playing too much Robloxwhich would be impressive if Gala’s developers were actually going through the growing pains of puberty, but the end product isn’t the milestone in Web3 that Gala claims.

To answer Gala’s question, I’d much rather enjoy the lush and thoughtful world of red dead as a decrepit Web 2.0 plebeian as a passport a grit Horse back and forth across the blockchain in pursuit of a mere six fartbucks.

grit doesn’t have a release date yet, but if you can’t wait to be exploited by a digital horse, the beer company is Budweiser announced an NFT collection featuring “the pioneers of digital horse racing.” Zed Run. It’s actually against God to create a blockchain game that doesn’t involve horses. By the way, I’m so glad we cut down rainforests for this.