Epic Games is continuing its embrace of blockchain and Web3 by showcasing Blankos Block Party, an NFT game developed by a GameFi studio. It’s a contrarian stance to that taken by some of the other major players in the industry.
Epic Games puts forward a game based on NFT
While the video game industry is showing divergent opinions regarding blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Epic Games is renewing its favorable stance in this regard.
Indeed, even if other industry giants like Steam or Mojang Studio, the publisher of Minecraft, are closed to this new technology, it is quite different for the developer of Fortnite. And for good reason, Epic Games’ store just featured Blankos Block Party, a game developed by Mythical Games, a GameFi studio.
The game allows players to compete in a succession of mini-games such as death matches or speed runs, all in a colorful environment :
Rewards earned in-game like equipment or new characters are actually NFTs that can be sold on the game’s marketplace.
As for the Epic Games store, the game is not available in Europe, as it is still waiting for an authorization to be put forward. However, it will be accessible with a VPN or without any restrictions from the Blankos website.
Epic Games’ Web3 route
So, although Epic Games is not behind Blankos Block Party, the fact remains that this highlight on its store is a strong signal sent to the ecosystem.
Let’s not forget that this is not the publisher’s first try at Web 3.0. And for good reason, earlier this year, the studio had announced an impressive fundraising of 2 billion dollars to build a metaverse.
As well as these two visions between the different publishers, we can note that the relationship of the players towards NFTs is still controversial. On the one hand, some see it as the logical evolution of video games, where the player finds a real notion of ownership, while others consider that monetization takes away the pleasure of playing.
Whatever the case, Blankos Block Party, like many play-to-earn games, is free to download. As far as Epic Games is concerned, there is no doubt that this will not be their last step in the GameFi sector.
