The Wall Street Journal this week ran an article declaring that the NFT (non-fungible token) market has crashed and is flatlining. It's down by 90% on several measures from last November.

While we're not NFT fans and expressed contempt for the Matrix and Ubisoft forays into this new territory, we don't share the same sense of glee which is commonly being expressed because we unfortunately doubt that they're done and dusted.

The notion that people could be convinced to regard digital items as having intrinsic value is far too appealing for those with the potential to profit from them to let go of lightly.

In our experience merely being unpopular doesn't stop a business practice.

What gets that job done is other businesses making more money by appealing to that unpopularity and offering consumers a product free from the hated feature.

A question which game developers will be investigating right now is what proportion of fantasy roleplaying game Elden Ring's 12 million sales can be attributed to it being microtransaction free?

Another one would be how a game like that which doesn't include any microtransactions affects purchase decisions of NFTs in other games?

If Elden Ring is enjoyable and offers you all of the things for free which other games charge extra for (aka NFTs), what is the real value of those other games and their NFTs?

Elden Ring launched on February 25.

Game NFT sales were already dropping from the beginning of February but after the 25th they flatline.

Sales graphs for art and collectibles don't follow this pattern. 

Other major game developers, and also Netflix who are just getting into this business, had previously aligned themselves against microtransactions.

On March 18, upcoming Harry Potter roleplaying game Hogwarts Legacy declared that it would be microtransaction free.

Upon closer examination it appears that game NFTs might be in worse condition than they first appeared.

Perhaps we can allow ourselves just a smidge of glee.

[ Main Image: Game NFT sales for 2022. Credit: NonFungible. ]

References

Otto, Marco Vito (July 21, 2021). Netflix CEO Confirms the Streaming Giant Will Also Offer Video Games. Collider.

Vigna, Paul (May 3, 2022). NFT Sales Are Flatlining. The Wall Street Journal.

Walker, John (May 4, 2022). NFT Market Collapses Just As Square Enix Sells Tomb Raider To Bet Big On Blockchain. Kotaku.

Wikipedia. Elden Ring. (viewed May 8, 2022)

Wood, Chandler [@FinchStrife] (March 18, 2022). We've seen this question coming up and want to set the record straight. Twitter.