Team17 Announce NFTs Then Retract Them

There are a large number of U-Turn articles and press releases from publishers big and small that I see day in and day out. You would think that the larger games industry, of which can easily see everything I do, would take note and possibly stop trying to jump on trends that receive this amount of pushback from industry professionals, journalists, and consumers on the whole. It would be nice to think happy thoughts about executives having enough self-awareness to check the vibe of the room. Nonetheless, Monday, British games publisher of bite-sized and colorful fun games, as well as some legendary IPs, announced they’d found a way to do “Eco-friendly” NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) for Worms.

I won’t repeat what I said for the few minutes following the discovery of that Eurogamer article, which notified me of the stupidity being taken on. If I did, my editor would have to redact seven-hundred and eighty-six profanity-laced words, partially in the direction of Team17‘s executives. The words were partially at the brick wall that people I know turn into when I find these things, and mostly the CryptoBros that push this nonsense. In short: Idiots who think they understand international economics better than economists believe their Monopoly money is the way of the future, despite the environmental harm this causes with the “mining.”

Team17’s initial announcement was to reassure everyone that, no really, they are the good guys, not using as much electricity on unicorn farts. If you haven’t gathered by now, I’m not a fan. These Worms all-digital limited-edition collectibles were meant to equate to the sum (according to Eurogamer) of every 100,000 NFTs bought accounting for about 11 households worth of boiling a kettle after Eastenders has ended. For Americans: A kettle is a thing you plug into the wall and boil water for instant coffee, and Eastenders is a program where the insult “slag” is used with verbosity. Which, if you are able to count high enough, still isn’t exemplary.

I want to put that into perspective: Two weeks following the release of NFTs in Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the company sold fifteen. Not fifteen-million, nor thousand, or even hundred, just fifteen. That is a number so small, to balance out the harm done, you’d have to plant and grow several rainforests. “It’s the future of gaming!” decries the morons set to make a mess of my DMs tomorrow morning. No, it is not, especially if you can’t get enough numbers behind your way of the future to cause a fire hazard in a medium-sized assembly hall playing host to the local bingo tournament.

Nonetheless, we’re caught up with recent goings-on, so it shouldn’t surprise you to see also in Eurogamer’s initial article on this, there were developers under the Team17 banner revolting against it. This brings us to late last evening in the UK, around 9 PM, the press (myself included) got emails about a press release that was to go out right away. In the short statement, the company said: “Team17 is today announcing an end to the MetaWorms NFT project. We have listened to our Teamsters, development partners, and our games’ communities, and the concerns they’ve expressed, and have therefore taken the decision to step back from the NFT space.”

That was it, the whole press release, lacking an apology to the developers and social media managers who undoubtedly got a lot of swear words thrown at them via Twitter. Nothing about harming the brand of the Worms franchise, though if we’re honest, the Switch port of Worms Rumble did enough of that last year. This is what happens when you jump on a fad that is (by nature) vague enough that business people think it is popular but not popular enough to have a loud-enough counter-argument until moments like this. Here is a tip: Wait until someone else sends their Worm off the cliff before you see how stupid it is, and throw a Holy Hand Grenade down there while you are at it.