NEWSby CBL,email@CBL_FactorIt all started in 2006 with an armor for ch'wal. The DLC for Oblivion was an early example of micro-transactions. It was ridiculous at the time. It always is. Then gradually these micro-transactions for cosmetic accessories were democratized and became the basis of a new economic model: free-to-play. But they have also allowed big publishers to rack up a delirious buck on their paying AAAs. EA is making over a billion and a half dollars in revenue with the Ultimate Team mode. Yet this is only the beginning. The future of micro-transactions is NFTs. Remember that when you buy an NFT, you are not really buying content but roughly speaking a URL to the content in question and a certificate of authenticity. But by their nature, NFTs have two advantages over traditional micro-transactions: Let's apply this to EA's Ultimate Team modes. EA can now produce limited runs of certain cards and sell them assholes. And if buyers resell them, EA will earn a commission on the sale in question. I take the example of EA because the publisher's CEO says that NFTs are the future of video games. And that's not all. He also mentions a concept called "play-to-earn". You see, NFTs are attached to a blockchain and there is usually a cryptocurrency associated with that blockchain. In a play-to-earn game, you receive rewards for playing often in the form of cryptocurrency tokens. You can then use the tokens in question to buy NFTs but also things that have nothing to do with the JV if the tokens are accepted as a form of payment or even exchange them for real money on an exchange market .In both cases, the publisher of the play-to-earn in question wins. Issuing the tokens does not cost them much. On the other hand, selling NFTs is ultra-profitable. And the more the tokens are used, the more they gain in value and the publisher that issues the tokens will always keep a considerable amount as a war chest. The whole thing raises a whole host of ethical and legal questions. If you are paid to play, does that make you employees of the publisher? Or self-employed? Do you have to pay social charges and taxes? If the rewards are random, are we closer to the casino model? What is certain is that the entire JV industry is thinking directly or indirectly about sticking NFTs in their games. For example: At Konami, we read my dictionary and we want to impress its shareholders by talking about cloud/AI/5G/NFT when in fact they can't even manage to release a drinkable football game. Anything? No. A small village in the American northwest is still resisting the invader: Valve has blacklisted NFTs and cryptocurrencies from Steam and removed games from its store for this reason. Of course, Tim Sweeney didn't wait long to explain that the EGS would accept the games in question, to which we feel like saying that there may be other priorities for the EGS like adding a fucking basket. In any case, if you want to make easy money, now is the time. Venture capitalists are dropping hundreds of millions of dollars to finance start-ups working on the subject. Mythical Games, for example, raised $150 million. This name may mean nothing to you, but it is the publisher of Blankos Block Party. It was originally a Roblox clone but has since evolved into a play-to-earn full of NFTs. We're talking about a colorful and fun thing designed for kids. Yep, good luck to current and future parents. Buy Nintendo: they're unlikely to hang around there. Just to add a moldy icing on the shitty cake, the majority of current NFTs are tied to Ethereum. Like Bitcoin, the latter is based on proof-of-work: to validate transactions, you have to record a new block by making nag calculations as useless as they are artificial. Digiconomist, a source quoted directly by Ethereum, estimates that the power consumption of the computers running the whole thing equals that of Finland while the carbon footprint equals that of Switzerland. Not to mention the wasted computing power... The most prodigious thing is that the announcements from the publishers mentioned above arrived in the middle of COP26... Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Google+Share on Pinterest VALVe Epic Games NFT