UPDATED! EDITORIAL: Minecraft Bans NFT Servers and In-Game Items, Catching NFT Worlds Off Guard

In the wake of the ongoing cryptocrash, and the falling dominoes of crypto firms, I have been spending a bit of time lately learning more about the blockchain space, hanging out in various Reddit communities where such matters are discussed. As I commented on one post:

Crypto culture is kinda fascinating in a train wreck kind of way.

Yesterday, Mojang Studios (the makers of the phenomenally successful voxel-based building game/metaverse Minecraft, which is owned by Microsoft), posted the following announcement on their official blog:

Hello everyone! Recently, we’ve received some feedback from members of the community asking for clarification and transparency regarding Mojang Studios and Minecraft’s position on NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and blockchain. 

While we are in the process of updating our Minecraft Usage Guidelines to offer more precise guidance on new technologies, we wanted to take the opportunity to share our view that integrations of NFTs with Minecraft are generally not something we will support or allow.

This news appears to have come as a most unwelcome surprise to the blockchain gaming company NFT Worlds, which posted the following message to their Discord announcements channel* and to Twitter:

First and foremost – this out-of-nowhere announcement by Microsoft/Minecraft to outright ban all possible uses of NFTs & blockchain tech within Minecraft feels like a step backwards in innovation, and may even have painful downstream effects for them in the long run—we’ll see how that plays out.

Regardless, we’re working through this internally and have all hands on deck brainstorming solutions around the Minecraft EULA changes, as well as outright pivots for the NFT Worlds ecosystem and team if necessary.

Our order of operations in figuring this out is as follows.

We’re working to get in contact with the right decision makers within the Minecraft policy enforcement team as well as the general Minecraft studio to understand the details of this policy change, what the true internal motivators may have been, and how if at all we can find an alternative outcome that’s beneficial to the Minecraft player base as well as Microsoft’s vested interest in Blockchain / NFT technology and GameFi.

In the event after the above conversations we come to the conclusion we can continue to operate, the show goes on as it’s been.

However, if we’re truly banned because of the risk of C&D/DMCA/Lawsuit by Minecraft/Microsoft from innovating on top of the Minecraft ecosystem, we move forward, we pivot.

The first option from here is we transition into our own Minecraft-like game engine & games platform. There’s been dozens of minecraft-like game engines developed over the last decade by various 3rd party teams – These were people wanting to innovate beyond the idea of Minecraft and add their own spin on it. This option means acquiring one of these engines & development teams to join us, and developing on top of it to bring the same vision for NFT Worlds to fruition but with Minecraft & Microsoft entirely out of the picture with no ability to stop us.

The second option is a pivot to a GameFi platform as a service for any game developer or games studio to effortlessly implement the same proven, patent pending, friction removing tech for GameFi we’ve developed over the last year and have intentionally generalized the last 9 months in the event we decided to or needed to branch out into a GameFi platform. All the systems that we’ve already built would be extremely quick and easy for us to pivot to an implementation for anyone to use. The other interesting piece here is as soon as the Minecraft news was announced, we’ve had multiple other metaverse / gamefi projects immediately reaching out to us wanting to use this tech we’ve already proven, strongly kickstarting possible adoption of such a platform. If we go this route, existing NFT Worlds, $WRLD and Genesis Avatar holders would have an equivalent stake via token and/or NFT(s) related to this platform based on their NFT Worlds related holdings once launched.

Like always, we’d love to hear our community’s opinion on everything presented above.

Bottom line, we’re not leaving. We have the community, we have the war chest, and we know we can build.

Here’s more details on that “war chest” they’re talking about (this article is dated February 24th, 2022, well before the crypto crash):

Clearly, people are into it — NFT Worlds has already generated $90 million in trading [on Opensea], even though it gave the 10,000 worlds away for free and only makes money from “royalties and secondary sales.” Worlds are currently going for a minimum of $45,000.

Yes, that’s right—NFT Worlds created 10,000 “fully decentralized, fully customizable, community-driven, play-to-earn” Minecraft worlds, which people have been buying and selling on the NFT marketplace Opensea. Gee, I wonder what those US$45,000-apiece worlds are worth right now, because without Minecraft’s cooperation, they’re pretty much worthless.

Needless to say, over on the blockchain/crypto/NFT snark subReddit community called r/Buttcoin†, people are having an absolute field day discussing this! Honestly, you need to go over there and read through the discussion, it’s quite entertaining. One commenter, after reading NFT Worlds’ announcement above, summarized it hilariously:

TL;DR: We want Microsoft to know they are wrong, and we are innovators. If they don’t allow the project, we will make our own, better Minecraft with blackjack and hookers.

Another Redditor responded:

Wow, imagine running a business totally dependent on someone else, yet being caught unaware on major business decision of this entity on whom you completely dependent upon.

Sounds like just the way people in crypto do business…with zero awareness of whats going on around them.

Seriously…how on earth do you build a company whose business model goes out the window with a single decision by the corporation who RUNS THE PLATFORM THEY’RE DEPENDENT UPON?!?? This is a prime example of a harebrained, half-baked cryptoscheme that somebody hatched up and was able to earn a tidy profit from, selling highly volatile, speculative blockchain-based assets to ignorant customers, who perhaps thought that they would be able to sell them for a profit to the next fool who comes along. It’s maddening.

Minecraft goes on to explain its decision:

In our Minecraft Usage Guidelines, we outline how a server owner can charge for access, and that all players should have access to the same functionality. We have these rules to ensure that Minecraft remains a community where everyone has access to the same content. NFTs, however, can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with our Guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft.

To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our client and server applications, nor may Minecraft in-game content such as worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods, be utilized by blockchain technology to create a scarce digital asset. Our reasons follow.

Some companies have recently launched NFT implementations that are associated with Minecraft world files and skin packs. Other examples of how NFTs and blockchain could be utilized with Minecraft include creating Minecraft collectible NFTs, allowing players to earn NFTs through activities performed on a server, or earning Minecraft NFT rewards for activities outside the game. 

Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together. NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots. The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.

Amen. 100%! CRYPTO ADDS NOTHING TO MINECRAFT! (I can’t believe I am cheering for Microsoft here…)

It is honestly refreshing to see yet another major corporation draw a line in the sand, and explain so clearly why they are drawing that line! Minecraft is a game, and games are supposed to be fun, people. (By the way, it would appear that Axie Infinity and all the other “play-to-earn” NFT games are bleeding users during this cryptocrash, as they can no longer earn enough to make it profitable. And it’s not just play-to-earm, it’s all the X-to-earn NFT schemes, like the NFT-based running app StepN, whose payouts to users have cratered in just two months.)

As I have editorialized before, a harsh, long, bitter crypto winter is going to shake out a lot of sketchy companies with poorly-thought-out plans, like NFT Worlds.

I suspect that NFT Worlds is going to go through a rough patch…

*To see this message, you will have to join the NFT Worlds Discord, which requires you to jump through a few hoops to verify that you’re a human being. I joined just to get a copy of the announcement, but I might stick around as a lurker, just to see how the company and its users attempt to spin this disaster 😉

†Seriously, if you haven’t checked out r/Buttcoin yet, please do so, along with Molly White excellent website, Web3 Is Going Just Great (the title is meant to be sarcastic), which outlines the latest crises, hoaxes, scams, and fiascoes in the blockchain space, keeping a running total of money lost to date in a ticker in the bottom right-hand corner.

UPDATE July 27th, 2022: Ars Technica has an update on the saga here. Apparently, the NFT Worlds token’s value has plummeted over 60 percent in a week following Mojang’s announcement.

My Predictions for Social VR, Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse for 2022

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? You’re invited to be a part of the first ever cross-worlds discussion group, with over 600 people participating from every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it. You’re welcome to come join us! More details here.


I was going to write up another entry in my ongoing Pandemic Diary series today, but then I read Wagner James Au’s predictions for 2022, and I suddenly realized I had neglected to write up my own blogpost, with my predictions for the next twelve months! So let me polish my crystal ball and see what comes up… 😉

Among Wagner’s predictions is this one, which I agree with 100%—make that 1,000%!

There will be a major scandal or controversy around one of the blockchain/NFT-oriented Metaverse platforms.

With NFTs beset by scams and NFT/blockchain-oriented metaverse platforms seeing low user numbers but extremely high investment and speculation, this is only a matter of time.  

It’s only January 12th, 2022, but I have already written about a number of questionable NFT projects which at best are crazy schemes, and at worst are outright scams! MetaWorld springs to mind as the perfect example of the latter (ALLEGEDLY, I hasten to add, although IN MY OPINION, I don’t believe there is any actual MetaWorld platform, aside from a prototype which was created years ago by someone who has since left the company to work for Somnium Space).

By the way, I have been reliably informed that, after an absence caused by the publication of this damning recent piece of investigative journalism by Engadget, Dedric Reid is once again active on Clubhouse, shilling MetaWorld in his own rooms and in other rooms about the metaverse on the still-popular social audio platform. He’s also relisted his (ALLEGEDLY, IN MY OPINION) worthless virtual land NFTs on OpenSea, after NiftyKit took the original listings on his website down when the original artist he stole the images from to illustrate his NFTs lodged a copyright complaint.

Despite all the negative press from the Engadget exposé and my series of blogposts about MetaWorld, Dedric continues undeterred. Someone joked to me via Discord DMs that Dedric Reid is the Elizabeth Holmes of the metaverse, and I laughed out loud because it’s such an apt, concise description! Harsh, savage, but accurate.

But on to other topics; I am tired of talking about Dedric Reid and MetaWorld (and frankly, whoever falls for his ALLEGED scam at this point is simply not doing their proper due diligence, IN MY OPINION). There’s a lot of actual progress being made by many legitimate metaverse companies building social VR/AR platforms and virtual worlds!

First, Facebook—sorry, Meta! I predict that Meta is going to have a very bumpy year ahead. The company was roundly criticized by the virtual reality community when they announced that. starting in October 2020, all Oculus VR hardware users had to set up accounts on the toxic Facebook social network. While Mark Zuckerberg, in his now-infamous Connect 2021 keynote, said that the company was looking at removing this requirement, I’ll believe it when I actually see it happen. Words are hollow, Mark; what matters are actions.

I predict that Facebook (sorry, Meta) is going to have a rough year

Meta is facing such a never-ending litany of complaints, scandals, and even legal actions that this is, once again, a very easy prediction to make for 2022.

Next prediction: there’s going to be a lot of activity this year in the fuzzy overlap area between games and virtual worlds, what I like to call the “metaverse-adjacent” space. Both games (e.g. Fortnite, Minecraft) and game platforms (e.g. Roblox, Core) will continue to add new features in an effort to become more like social VR/AR apps and virtual worlds. And, given their immense popularity, especially among children, tweens, and teens, many people will get their first taste of the metaverse via these games and game platforms, in much the same way as an entire generation got their start in the metaverse via Second Life.

Speaking of Second Life, in my predictions for 2021, I wrote the following:

And, indeed, 2021 was the first year in which VRChat began to consistently surpass Second Life in user concurrency figures (Rec Room did too, I believe). VRChat has been breaking new user concurrency records, leading up to and including New Year’s Eve 2021, as Johnny Rodriguez tweeted:

Last night, 88,700 people put on a VR headset and decided to join the VRChat New Years event to countdown [to] the new year. For reference, this is Husker’s Memorial Stadium [at the University of Nebraska], which fits around 86,000 people when completely full. VR is here to stay.

Turning back to Second Life, the coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary surge in usage (and the current Omicron wave might well prompt people to dust off their avatars and give it another try, too). I still estimate that SL has somewhere between 500,000 and 900,000 active users per month (that is, people who sign in at least once in the past thirty days). I really wish that Linden Lab would regularly release statistics like this, but if they are declining (slowly or quickly), I can also understand why the company would be reluctant to do so.

It doesn’t help matters that Second Life’s userbase skews significantly older than most other social VR platforms, virtual worlds, and metaverse-adjacent apps like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox. SL users are (literally) dying off! However, Second Life still remains popular enough (and a reliable cash cow) to keep merrily coasting along for many years. And with the deep pockets and good connections of the Waterfield investment group (of which Second Life is now a part), the future looks bright.

I wish I could say the same about Sansar, which from my (admittedly limited) perspective, seems to be circling the drain. I wrote the following post in the official Second Life community forums late last year:

I was part of Sansar since I was invited into the closed beta in 2016/2017, and I was there for the whole crazy ride. Sansar is now on life support (the company that bought it from Linden Lab, called Wookey, furloughed all of its staff recently, and I believe that they could shut down at any moment without warning). Being there from beginning to end, I still marvel at how Linden Lab thought they could build a new virtual world/social VR platform and just put it out there, and expect it to sell itself in this competitive marketplace for metaverse platforms. “Build it and they will come” might have worked for SL in 2003 but it sure ain’t gonna work nowadays. You have to PROMOTE yourself to get noticed.

Also, Linden Lab could have done a lot of things to try and entice SL users to a) visit Sansar and b) make them want to stay, build worlds, create content, and form a new community. Instead, what happened is that Second Life folks (rightly or wrongly) saw Sansar as something which distracted LL from its work on SL, and as a result most SL folks hated Sansar and refused to have anything to do with it, hastening its downfall in my opinion. It also didn’t help that Linden Lab made a bet that many people would be owning high-end VR headsets tethered to high-end PCs with good graphics cards, and instead the Oculus Quest wireless headset took off.

I still shake my head and wonder “what if?”. Say a prayer for Sansar, it needs it. 

Right now, Sansar’s best hope for survival in 2022 is for another company who wants to enter the metaverse marketplace to buy the platform from Wookey, much the same as Microsoft stepped in at the eleventh hour to snap up AltspaceVR.

Another prediction: we are going to see an increase in the number of companies providing services to metaverse platforms. Wagner James Au mentions the Linden Lab subsidiary Tilia, which provides financial services, in his blogpost which I linked to up top; I predict that they will land a few more clients this year. Another example of a company doing well in this niche is Ready Player Me, the avatar system currently in use in VRChat and over 1,000 other apps and games on VR, mobile, desktop, and web. Expect this nascent business-to-business sector to explode this year!

Well, that’s it for me, for now. I might update this blogpost with other predictions for 2022 as they come to me.

And I ask you, my faithful readers: what predictions are you making for the next twelve months? Feel free to leave a comment, or use the feedback form on my blog if you’d prefer to contact me directly. You’re also welcome to join the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, a cross-worlds community where over 600 people, with experience in various metaverse platforms, welcome you! Just click the button on the left-side panel of my blog as shown (image right). If you are connecting via a smartphone or tablet instead of your computer desktop, just click the three-bars menu button in the upper-right hand corner, then scroll down until you see the Discord widget displayed.

1029Chris: A Duck for All Worlds

1029Chris is among that group which I half-jokingly, half-lovingly refer to as “my people“: passionate proponents of social VR platforms and virtual worlds, the sort of people who believe in the power and potential of virtual worlds, much the same as I do. Many of them belong to the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, where we gather to discuss, debate, and argue over various metaverse projects, and share pictures and videos of our adventures.

One of those people, 1029Chris (she/her), is a Canadian avatar creator. I have written about 1029Chris’ work in passing when I blogged about VRChat’s Virtual Market 4:

1029Chris’ bird sanctuary: feed the wonderfully animated ducks!

…I was invited to experience a special world built by someone I know well from the RyanSchultz.com Discord, 1029Chris, who had spent two weeks creating an amazing bird sanctuary with animated ducks, who milled about, and responded eagerly when I selected food items from a nearby picnic table to feed them! It was wonderfully done, and I hope to return soon for another visit.

Chris’s world is called the Udon Bird Sanctuary, if you are searching for it in VRChat. A visit is highly recommended, especially if you are feeling stressed out!

Chris’ signature duck avatar in VRChat
Another shot of Chris in VRChat

But 1029Chris is active in so many more virtual worlds than VRChat! She has decided to bring her signature duck and opossum avatars into as many virtual worlds and online games as she can. Here are some pictures which Chris kindly shared with me:

Chris’s duck and opossum avatars in Second Life
Chris in Sansar
Chris in Tower Unite
A couple of shots of Chris (in the world she created) on the old High Fidelity social VR platform
Chris in Barotrauma
Chris’ possum avatar in Garry’s Mod
Chris and her boyfriend in Garry’s Mod
Chris in Half Life 1
Chris in Minecraft

But Chris doesn’t just do still pictures! She also does machinima (that is, videos which are recorded in virtual worlds and games):

Chris in Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Chris in Super Mario 64 (I absolutely love the part where she takes off her glasses and mops her brow!)
Chris in Half Life 2
Chris in Jet Set Radio Future
Chris in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Chris in Yakuza 0

1029Chris is only one of many people I know who delight in bringing their avatars from one virtual world to another. All of them possess skills I wish I had!