Team17 studios speak out against ‘Worms’ NFT plans

A number of Team17 partner studios have spoken out against the publisher’s recent announcement they would be making Worms NFTs.

Yesterday, January 31, Team17 announced they would be making NFTs based on the Worms franchise. They provided NME with a statement saying that “Team17 has no plans to introduce NFTs or play-to-earn NFT mechanics into any of its indie game label titles.” Now, a number of studios that have games published by Team17 have spoken out against the NFT announcement.

The official Overcooked Twitter released a statement that doesn’t directly mention Team17 by name, but is in relation to the news. “We at Ghost Town Games just wanted to reassure you all that Overcooked (and any of our future games) will never engage with NFTs,” reads the statement.

“We don’t support NFTs. We think they carry too great an environmental and social cost. We also want to ask folk to be kind when voicing their concerns to their friendly neighbourhood community managers.”

Aggro Crab, developers of the rogue-like Going Under, also released a statement, saying that they will no longer be working with Team17. “We believe NFTs cannot be environmentally friendly, or useful, and really are just an overall fucking grift.

“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.”

SMG Studio, developer of Moving Out, also released a statement over Team17 announcing Worm NFTs, as well as Navegante, developer of Greak: Memories of Azur, who said they are “passionate about providing value to the gaming industry and making it better.”

Numerous anonymous sources also told NME that they were not aware of the NFT plans that were announced yesterday.

All tweets related to the announcement have been deleted, but the official website and Discord server are both still up.

In other news, the Federal Trade Commission will be reviewing Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.