Aggro Crab condemns Team17 over Worms NFT announcement

Aggro Crab, the developer of Going Under, has announced that they will not work with publisher Team17 on future titles, following the announcement of “MetaWorms” NFTs.

Nick and Caelan got pretty crabby with their point-blank Twitter condemnation of Team17’s decision. They write:

We at Aggro Crab condemn Team17’s decision to produce and engage with NFTs.

We believe NFTs cannot be environmentally friendly, or useful, and really are just an overall fucking grift.

Please do not harass employees at Team17 or the devs under their umbrella, as this decision seems to have taken everyone off guard and likely came from the very top.

Needless to say, we will not be working with them on further titles, and encourage other indie developers to do the same unless this decision is reversed.

I fucking hate it here.

 – Nick & Caelan

NFTs have be thrown into the spotlight over the past year, with numerous major publishers expressing an interest and testing the waters with their own NFT sales. Ubisoft launched Quartz as a new platform (and then said that people just don’t “get it” when people hated the decision), Square Enix has announced future NFTs, Konami has launched a range of digital artwork, and on and on.

Team17 has followed in Ubisoft’s footsteps by trying to at least put the environmental impact of NFTs to one side. Where many of the earliest NFT platforms have relied on incredibly wasteful cryptocurrency systems like Etherium, other options have dramatically lower energy requirements to validate sales and ownership. Speaking on the matter, Team17 said “The ultra-low energy technology Reality Gaming Group uses, together with their carbon neutral servers, played an essential part of the reassurances we sought before our agreement,” and equated the cost to 11 households’ annual kettle usage.

Additionally, Team17 stated that their NFTs will not be applied to games and are merely digital artwork. Art is thoroughly subjective in terms of aesthetics and value, but I’m sure plenty of people will agree that the procedural generation that spawned the “Bored Apes” and is being used to create the “MetaWorms” often creates “art” that absolutely demands the use of air quotes.

Oh, and this is all before we get to the Ponzi scheme grifting surrounding NFTs, the rampant unapproved creation of NFTs, and all the other unlikable business practices that they could all too easily lead to.

Source: Twitter

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/02/01/aggro-crab-team17-worms-nft-fucking-grift/