Leading crypto exchange, FTX announced its decision to move into the gaming space. According to the company, they are going to introduce their own gaming unit that will focus on providing gaming companies with crypto lending services. Thereby, the exchange would act as a middleman. This means that FTX will offer support to other companies that offer NFTs or launch their tokens via its platform. The crypto exchange’s goal is to reach out to traditional gaming companies that will help them in focusing on development, while FTX handles the NFT commercialization and token launches.
This month, FTX has begun to hire positions and was searching for programmers who have experience using a renowned game engine by the name of Unity. According to an FTX spokesperson, they have decided to launch a gaming unit because they believe that games are an exciting use case where cryptocurrencies are concerned. The spokesperson went on to say that more than 2 billion gamers in the world had been collecting digital items while playing and now they would also be able to own them. This ownership refers to the launch of NFTs as elements, which players can leverage for establishing secondary economies and generate profits from their activities.
FTX’s interest in the gaming world is not a new one, as the company had entered into a partnership with Lightspeed and Solana Ventures last November for establishing a gaming fund worth $100 million. The fund has already spent $21 million for funding its first company called Faraway. While some traditional gaming developers as well as crypto companies have made some efforts for introducing NFTs and token economies into the gaming experience, some segments of the gaming community have mostly given a negative response. Amy Wu, managing a VC fund worth $2 billion for the exchange, acknowledged this fact.
Wu said that she couldn’t have predicted how some gamers would show animosity against NFTs, which is surprising and interesting alike. Some people consider the launch of NFTs as just another cash grab, while others are of the opinion that it has a negative impact on the environment because of the energy consumption involved in their use. Nonetheless, there are gaming companies like Ubisoftthat are working on integrating these elements into their franchises. In the opinion of executives of Ubisoft, their biggest issue with gamers is the failure of the latter to see the convenience that NFTs can offer to them.
The President of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda, also spoke in favor of introducing these new elements of the digital world into upcoming games. He said that this would allow companies to use user-generated content to create a ‘contribute to earn’ economy that would be beneficial for all parties. Regardless, the gaming community does not seem to be too keen when it comes to these NFTs, even though they have been introduced in other industries as well. Thus, it remains to be seen how this latest venture of FTX would fare in terms of popularity and acceptance.