Blizzard president dismisses idea of NFTs

Mike Ybarra, the president of Blizzard Entertainment, denied rumors that the video game publisher is about to delve into the world of NFTs and potentially play-to-earn games on Sunday, April 17.

Ybarra’s response comes after gaming press such as Eurogamer and GameRant reported that Blizzard sent out a survey on data analytics firm and internet-based market research YouGov to select Blizzard players to gauge its player base’s interest in the cryptocurrency universe, among other subjects. One section of the survey asked players if they would be interested in play-to-earn cryptocurrency games and NFTs.

Andy Robinson, an editor at the website VGC, shared a news piece on Twitter on April 17 about Blizzard’s survey and Ybarra replied that Blizzard won’t make NFTs.

Ybarra’s reply sparked different types of reactions. A few Blizzard players thanked him for not going down the route of implementing NFTs in the company’s releases, while others did not believe his response and asked the president why the survey was made in the first place if the company has no interest in doing cryptocurrency games. It’s unlikely that Blizzard will ever reveal the results of the survey, so we may never know how many players want the technology to be implemented.

Crypto and NFTs have become a hot topic and extremely popular over the past two years and some indie developers have already implemented NFTs and blockchain technology in their games. But it doesn’t seem like Blizzard will be joining that trend anytime soon.

Update April 18 2:40pm CT: Blizzard provided the following statement in regard to the previously reported survey: “The company conducts surveys regularly on a wide range of emerging topics to better learn about the interests of our players, regardless of our involvement in such trends.”