Gabe Newellthe famous chief of Valve and Steamhad his say on the growing issue of NFT and cryptocurrencies applied to video games, claiming to appreciate the technology behind them and their concept, but despising instead the actors who are currently involved in their use, i.e. the way in which NFT and cryptocurrencies are used in the videogame context.
“We need to separate the technology behind these things and the actors who are using this technology,” Newell replied when asked what do you think about NFT and applied cryptocurrencies. “It’s like being a chemist and looking at nitrocellulose thinking about all the interesting things that can be done with it technology underlying Distributed Ledgers and the notion of digital possession, shared universes, are all reasonable things, “explained the number one at Valve.
This is an interesting stance that can be shared in several respects, despite apparently going into conflict with the common sentiment of a large part of videogame users as well as the developers themselves, who generally reject the idea of NFTs. However, this aversion is due precisely to a questionable use of these technologies, as Newell also argues: “People involved in these elements, however, tend to be involved in criminal activity and truly ambiguous behavior,” added the head of Valve.
“So the problem concerns the actors, rather than the technology behind these elements or even the reason that pushes us to consider and use these tools”. On the other hand, the issue had already been considered in the past years by Steam, when the system introduced payment through bitcoin and then eliminated it in 2017: “At some point Steam had started to accept cryptocurrencies as payments, but this it made a lot of users angry. There was in fact the problem of volatility, which is a very bad thing in a trading medium. “
