Even Team17's own employees don't like the Worms NFTs

UPDATE

It turns out some of Team17’s own employees disapprove of the studio’s new NFT plans, although they didn’t learn about them until after the deal had already been made. Others didn’t know about them at all until today’s announcement.

Eurogamer contacted Team17 for further comments, to which it only replied by saying these Worms NFTs are similar to physical merchandise and that it has no plans to integrate NFTs or pay-to-earn mechanics into its actual games.

Given the near universally negative reception on social media, it remains to be seen if Team17 will stick to its guns or abandon the idea, much like GSC Game World did with its Stalker 2 NFTs.

ORIGINAL STORY

Team17 is the latest studio to get into NFTs, but it swears its Worms ones will be the good kind.

Reset the clock, it’s been zero days since another video game studio has announced their own NFT strategy. In this case, it’s Worms developer Team17.

The studio is partnering with NFT gaming company Reality Gaming Group to release limited edition pieces of computer-generated art for sale. If they look anything like the Glitter Worm on Team17’s new website, they’ll be ugly as sin, but that’s par for the course really.

Curiously, Team17 hasn’t formally announced its NFT plans via its website or social media channels. Instead, the announcement comes through Eurogamer, almost as if Team17 knew its social media would be overrun with negative feedback and backlash.

There is a Discord server with, at the time of writing, 122 members, but it’s clearly still in its infancy as it’s otherwise empty.

No doubt in an attempt to cancel out any criticism, Team17 swears its NFTs are environmentally friendly, and it will be donating a portion of any proceeds to another NFT firm called Coin4Planet, which ‘provides a blockchain-based financial infrastructure and marketplace that enable companies and private investors to invest directly in regenerative activities.’

Specifically, the money would go into the ReFeed Worms project, which invests in worm beds to process food waste. Considering the very creation of NFTs is environmentally damaging, this feels like the equivalent of burning down a forest and paying to plant a few trees to make up for it.

The environmental impact is, of course, not the only problem many take with NFTs as a concept, considering paying for one doesn’t mean you own it. You just get the rights to look at it.

In the case of artwork, people have been able to screenshot NFTs for themselves, with the original owner powerless to stop them.

It’s impossible for Team17 to not be aware of the unpopularity of NFTs considering the very negative public responses to previous efforts, such as Ubisoft’s.

Unfortunately, there remains an audience with enough money to drop on NFTs that, in the eyes of executives, makes the whole thing worth it despite the PR suicide.

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