Blizzard says it is not working on NFTs after a survey asking if players are interested in play-to-earn gaming

Some gamers playing Blizzard Entertainment titles recently answered a survey that included questions about NFTs in play-to-earn gaming. However, the company’s president Mike Ybarra was quick to shut down speculations that the developer is working on NFTs.

A Blizzard survey conducted by the British market research firm YouGov recently made the rounds online. Some players shared that a portion of the questionnaire asked them if they are interested in “emerging/future trends in gaming,” including “metaverse gaming experiences” and “play-to-earn gaming.”

Play-to-earn games have become popular over the last few years as most of them feature game elements that are NFTs, which then allows players to trade them for cryptocurrency or fiat currency. NFTs also appear as a separate category in the same survey question, while other more commonly used gaming technologies, such as cloud gaming, subscription services, and AR/VR.

However, Ybarra later responded to the speculations by replying to a tweet from VGC’s Andy Robinson. “No one is doing NFTs,” the Blizzard president said.

Surveys are not always indicative of a company’s future products and services, so Ybarra’s response was not entirely shocking. But it is also understandable if some gamers were quick to interpret the survey as Blizzard hinting at future NFT and metaverse plans. When Microsoft announced it is acquiring Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the Xbox owner said, “This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse.”

While it is unclear how Activision Blizzard will exactly help Microsoft realize its metaverse plans, Ubisoft is one of the few major video game companies with relatively concrete plans for NFTs. The game publisher launched the Quartz platform last year and introduced “Digits,” which is what Ubisoft calls its playable NFTs.

Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda is also very optimistic about the integration of blockchain technology in video games, but it remains to be seen how it will translate to the company’s vast collection of AAA IPs. “Final Fantasy XIV” director Naoki Yoshida, for one, assured fans his team is not planning on adding NFTs in the subscription-based MMORPG.

More recently, Sega also expressed optimism about the role that NFT and metaverse will play in the future of video games. “It is a natural extension for the future of gaming that it will expand to involve new areas such as cloud gaming and NFT,” Sega producer Masayoshi Kikuchi said.

Photo by Marco Verch from Flickr under Creative Commons license