The nonfungible token-driven online multiplayer shooter and platformer game Blankos Block Party has big plans and those plans include it being launched in the Epic Games Store.
The game’s publisher, Mythical Games, announced that its flagship title will have a chance to reach Epic’s 194 million players through its marketplace during the NFT NYC event this week.
Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are a type of blockchain technology that uses cryptographic hashes in a “chain” of transactions in order to allow recordkeeping of virtual items in games such as avatars, weapons, apparel, and currency. These items can then be bought, sold, and traded in online marketplaces for virtual or real currency.
The Epic Games Store has become a major platform for PC and Mac games and has expanded to over 194 million users in 2021. Epic Games is the publisher of the major hit Fortnite and the creator of the Unreal Engine, which is the powerhouse behind many games today. The publisher is also more agreeable to blockchain and crypto games than its distributor rival Valve Software, which runs Steam.
Blankos is part of what is called the “play-to-earn” industry, where players engage in gaming and earn digital assets through gameplay. It was pioneered by multiple different games, but one of the most prominent was Axie Infinity, where players would collect and breed creatures and earn a native cryptocurrency. With 2.8 million daily users and a total trading volume of $3.8 billion, it is one of the top P2E games.
This type of gaming, and NFTs in general, do not sit well with the broad gaming community, however, and there has been some major backlash when AAA studios speak about their interest in implementing blockchain and crypto technologies. As a result, some developers have withdrawn their interest or spoken out against the technology.
However, this has not slowed some developers from moving to slowly embrace the technology, such as Epic Games.
Image: Mythic Games
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