Worms Creators Abandon Terrible NFT Project After Only 24 Hours

Yesterday Team17—the studio behind the basic Worms sequence—introduced it was entering into the NFT area, teaming up with a 3rd get together to launch “collectible digital paintings based mostly on probably the most beloved IPs in indie video games”. A day later, that plan is within the bin.

The thought was for Team17 to license the Worms model to an organization referred to as Actuality Gaming, who would costume the worms up in silly outfits and promote them as NFTs, all of the whereas calling it an “artwork challenge”.

Not solely was the transfer criticised by followers and media alike, it additionally shortly affected Team17’s enterprise operations, with Going Below builders Aggro Crab issuing a press release saying they’d not be working with the writer:

Yooka-Laylee’s Playtonic Video games, who’ve additionally had earlier video games revealed with Team17, did a lot the identical factor:

As did Ghost City Video games, the studio behind the wildly-popular Overcooked sequence:

Who is aware of what number of additional reservations have been expressed behind closed doorways, however right here we’re, solely a day later, and Team17 simply issued the next assertion:

TEAM17 TO END METAWORMS NFT PROJECT

Team17 is right this moment asserting an finish to the MetaWorms NFT challenge. Now we have listened to our teamsters, improvement companions, and our video games’ communities, and the considerations they’ve expressed, and have subsequently taken the choice to step again from the NFT area.

Please know that each one events concerned would have recognized there could be adverse suggestions from followers, it’s not possible to be working within the area in 2022 and never see that coming. So any speak about coming to the choice solely after listening to the “neighborhood’s” response is bullshit; it’s the blowback from “improvement companions” and even their very own workers that led to this backflip.

As John mentioned yesterday, Team17 has been doing fairly nicely recently, so nicely actually that they’ve spent virtually $200 million on acquisitions during the last yr alone. They didn’t want to do that!