In a year when a slew of big-name brands are trying to bank on the success of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, and often much to the chagrin of critics, leave it to one indie game developer to not get sucked into the fad.
New Blood Interactive is a game development studio known for their charming retro-style first-person shooters, such as Dusk and Ultrakill, which both harken back to the simpler times of ripping and tearing through the original Quake on PC in the mid-to-late ’90s.
And in that same spirit of keeping things retro, the official Twitter account for the brand recently gave their blunt response to a fan’s query about whether they’ll start getting involved in NFTs like countless others: “NFTs? More like no f**king thanks.” You can check out the post for yourself below.
It’s no doubt a fan-pleasing move to denounce the use of the technology, with NFTs being a blockchain-backed form of digital collectibles that are regularly criticized for their perceived harm to the environment.
NFTs have had an explosive year in 2021, with interest surging after an artist named Beeple sold one of his digital pieces of artwork for $69 million.
Since then, brands such as Ubisoft and even the people running the comics great Stan Lee’s estate have gone all-in on the trend by introducing the world to their own versions of NFTs.
While NFTs are touted by some as putting the power back in the hands of artists, their association with crypto technology makes them controversial for the environmental toll such technology is thought to exert. For instance, NFTs and the cryptocurrencies with which they are purchased utilize much computing power to generate, resulting in the exorbitant use of energy and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions, some argue.
