Report Suggests 70% of Game Developers Not Interested in NFT Scams

Most game developers just aren’t into NFTs.  According to a new GDC survey, a whole 1% of them are working on their own NFT projects right now. There’s still another 7% there to be worried about that said they’re “very interested,” but the rest of the data provides more comfort.

The Game Developers Conference annual survey 2022 polled over 2,700 developers regarding their work and industry trends from 2021, and a lot of them seem disinterested when it comes to embracing cryptocurrencies and NFTs. When asked about interest in providing cryptocurrency payment options for their projects, 72% of developers said they were not interested. In a similar sentiment, 70% of developers shared those feelings about NFTs. That remainder of just under 30% of developers said they were either somewhat or very interested, leaving that lonesome 1% of folks currently working on NFT or crypto projects. Was that you, Square Enix?

In a hellscape of crypto and NFT schemes, there’s a shred of hope there that more industry creatives are choosing hate instead of create-with-cataclysmic-wastes-of-global-resources. Respondents offered additional comments, too. There’s quite a few that are interesting perspectives, but whoever said, “How this hasn’t been identified as a pyramid scheme is beyond me,” understands my everyday state.

There are also the usual points about how the technology could be great, the implementation isn’t, and how the technology is “the wave of the future.” Sure, I do believe given our current pace and general apathy, a technology that only further devastates our current climate crisis is the wave of the future. It’s just not a good wave. That being said, both NFTs and cryptocurrencies continue to see plenty of disingenuous defenders lamenting on and on about what they “could be,” except none of this stuff is the reality of what they are. Most of your fav ugly art projects rely on Ethereum, and the whole damn process for mining Ethereum is purposefully energy-guzzling. You can claim there are better alternatives, but it’s a pretty weird stance to take when your whole scheme has no interest in those alternatives.

Anyway, despite what that one guy with a monkey avatar in your Twitter mentions keeps yelling, the games industry isn’t as hot as it seems on NFTs and crypto. Companies like Konami, Ubisoft, Sega, and others have also told on themselves in bizarre NFT-related announcements, but the current sentiment among the industry still seems to point to this being an ugly, noisy trend that’s not nearly the phenomenon its loudest advocates want to believe it is. Fingers crossed that means the biggest players in the space take note and drop their 2022 plans for mass distributing worthless receipts.