Blockchain and NFT games are banned on Steam, but not the Epic Games Store

Valve and Epic are taking drastically different approaches to blockchain and NFT games on their storefronts, as Valve has moved to remove them from its platform.

The news comes via Age of Rust developer SpacePirate Games, who Tweeted that Valve would be removing all blockchain games from the platform – including Age of Rust.

Community: A few minutes ago, we were notified that @Steam will be kicking *all blockchain games* off the platform, including Age of Rust, because NFTs have value. Behind the scenes, we've had good communication and have been upfront with Steam. #blockchaingames #NFT
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— Age of Rust (@AgeofRust) October 14, 2021

“Steam’s point of view is that items have value and they don’t allow items that can have real-world value on their platform,” said SpacePirate Games. “While I respect their choice, I fundamentally believe that NFTs and blockchain games are the future. It’s why I started this journey with all of you.”

Valve’s point of contention seems to be the ‘real-world value’ nature of NFTs, which may be related to gambling laws in Washington, where the company is based.

It’s another matter over on the Epic Games Store, however. Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted the platform’s support for blockchain games, albeit with caveats.

“Epic Games Store will welcome games that make use of blockchain tech provided they follow the relevant laws, disclose their terms, and are age-rated by an appropriate group,” said Sweeney. “Though Epic’s not using crypto in our games, we welcome innovation in the areas of technology and finance.

“As a technology, the blockchain is just a distributed transactional database with a decentralised business model that incentivise investment in hardware to expand the database’s capacity. This has utility whether or not a particular use of it succeeds or fails.”

Epic seems to have changed its stance on blockchain games – Just last month Sweeney indicated his disapproval of the practice, stating:

“We aren’t touching NFTs as the whole field is currently tangled up with an intractable mix of scams, interesting decentralised tech foundations, and scams.”