Melbourne Studio The Voxel Agents Met With Backlash After Announcing The Gardens Between Is Being Sold As An NFT

“Surprise! #TheGardensBetween as an NFT”, Melbourne-based studio, The Voxel Agents, tweeted earlier today. And to their credit, fans certainly were surprised, but less in the way that was perhaps anticipated and more the kind of surprise you get when you’re three months into a serious relationship and the other person outs themselves as a climate change denier. Where to from here?

In this particular instance, it was a case of almost-immediate backlash with commenters decrying the move by The Voxel Agents to list their excellent indie puzzler The Gardens Between on NFT-based platform Pavillion Hub. The online storefront uses blockchain technology to grant users ownership of digital game licenses in a similar way to that of physical game purchases, with the ability to resell games, in-game content and even NFT-minted achievements.

same energy pic.twitter.com/ifDTtFrlXl

— mikey benjamin 🌵 (@kurtruslfanclub) May 31, 2021

Surprise! Time to uninstall and delist your game from my steam account.
Disgusting move.

— ≛ FRUIT✶JUSTICE ≛ (@Jaimonster) May 31, 2021

wow this is incredibly disappointing

— curly chip saf 🦀 🔥 (@Wanderlustin) May 31, 2021

Disappointing to see such a cool studio jump on an awful bandwagon.

— Krystal VW Bergman (@technecat) May 17, 2021

The issue, naturally, is that NFT (or non-fungible token) technology’s reputation as an environmentally-damaging scheme that does nothing but give tech dudebros another way to shuffle digital value around and facilitate art theft is well-known. There’s a lot to know about NFTs that we won’t go into here, but Mashable has a very easy-to-read explainer on why they’re not great, actually.

https://twitter.com/demanrisu/status/1399230366833995777?s=20

So how did a respected Aussie studio get involved in something like NFTs? Well, for starters, Pavillion Hub has been spruiking their service as having less environmental impact than other NFT solutions thanks to using Proof of Stake to secure its transactions versus the traditional Proof of Work. Again, there’s decent material around to learn more about the differences, but the truth (and Pavillion Hub’s argument in why their platform should be considered) is that PoS is better for the environment.

But why adopt a “less impactful” version of a harmful technology at all, instead of simply continuing to sell the product through existing storefronts or as a DRM-free purchase? That’s the criticism that The Voxel Agents now faces, especially given that Pavillion Hub still widely embraces traditional blockchain/cryptocurrency technologies and accepts them as payment.

What worries me is this platform profits from *and encourages* transactions with existing PoW crypto. this is defs not eco-friendly messaging? pic.twitter.com/PPmc5sJshQ

— soft science 🌱 (@_SoftScience) May 31, 2021

A later tweet from the developer acknowledges that they weren’t aware that PH would be accepting crypto as payment for their game and discloses that they’re in talks with the platform regarding this.

yeah look obviously its a super hot topic. taking the tweet down feels a bit disingenuous. what i have learnt from this experience is that @Pavillionhub needs to clean up where the payments come from. i'm actively chatting with them now as it was a revelation to me today.

— The Voxel Agents (@TheVoxelAgents) May 31, 2021

At this stage it seems as though The Voxel Agents will stick to their decision to list their game on Pavillion Hub in spite of criticism, perhaps at least coming to some agreement about their payment terms. It’s obviously not a great situation for the indie studio, which clearly didn’t expect the reaction it received to this announcement. Hopefully though it comes as a lesson for creatives in all mediums that NFTs as they are now, even in their least-impactful forms, are at best a bit of a scam and at worst an unnecessary expense on the future of our planet.