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Nike teases upcoming ‘Airphoria’ NFT sneaker hunt on Fortnite

June 17, 2023 Coin Telegraph

In a short promotional video, Nike’s logo for its web3 platform .SWOOSH features alongside the logos for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and Fortnite game.

Footwear and apparel giant Nike has hinted that it may soon drop a collection of sneaker nonfungible tokens in Epic Games’ widely popular online game Fortnite.

The move would mark a potentially huge opportunity for Web3 adoption by traditional gamers, given that Fortnite has had more than 242.9 million active players over the past 30 days, according to Active Player.

Great catch with the @dotSWOOSH reference. @FortniteGame integration would be the biggest thing that's ever happened with NFTs
— Jalazo.eth (@nft4dummies) June 16, 2023

In a June 16 announcement across Nike’s social media channels, the firm stated that on June 20 the “ultimate Sneakerhunt begins.”

In a brief accompanying video, Fortnite’s logo and Nike’s Air Max logo are featured front and center amongst a backdrop of floating clouds in the sky.

The video then transitions to reveal the name of the sneaker hunt, “Airphoria” and concludes by showing Nike’s logo for its web3 platform .SWOOSH alongside the logo for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

On 6.20 the ultimate Sneakerhunt begins. ️️ pic.twitter.com/QgMyA1uXRT
— Nike (@Nike) June 16, 2023

Details are sparse at this stage, however, members of the NFT community speculated that Nike may have built an NFT-related game using Fornite Creative 2.0, which essentially enables users to create their virtual island game maps using Fortnite assets.

“I remember that Fortnite recently launched Fortnite Creative 2.0, which has a strong self-built map mode similar to creating games on ROBLOX. I guess Nike may have used this mode to create a game. Two years ago, Nike also created a game on ROBLOX, but it was not combined with NFT[s] at that time,” noted @clone_news_cn.

While it is not 100% confirmed if NFTs will be a part of Airphoria, .SWOOSH’s involvement would suggest that it is on the cards, while Epic Games also holds a friendly stance towards NFT gaming.

Nike’s NFT unit has been ramping up its efforts to edge its way into the traditional gaming space of late.

On June 1, .SWOOSH announced that its NFTs will be integrated into games developed by EA Sports, the company behind the hugely successful FIFA soccer game franchise, among others. However it has not been confirmed which EA Sports games will eventually have Nike NFTs in them.

EA SPORTS @dotSWOOSH https://t.co/hNxxdaMgRL pic.twitter.com/NH8vp0fWoQ
— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) June 1, 2023

Magazine: NFT Creator: ‘Holy shit, I’ve seen that!’ — Coldie’s Snoop Dogg, Vitalik and McAfee NFTs

Fortnite Creator Has No Plans To Follow in the Footsteps of Minecraft’s NFT Ban, Says Epic Games CEO

July 22, 2022 The Daily Hodl

Epic Games ‘definitely won’t’ follow Minecraft NFT ban

July 22, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has said that the firm will not ban NFTs, as devs “should be free to decide how to build their games.”

Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney says his firm “definitely won’t” follow Minecraft's developers in banning non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

As previously reported, Minecraft developers Mojang Studios banned NFT integrations on July 20 as it believes the speculative aspect of NFTs, along with scarcity and risks of exclusion and scams supposedly associated with NFTs being against the game’s principles.

The move was seen as highly controversial in the NFT community, while it has been met with praise by the cohort of crypto-skeptic gamers.

Sweeney’s company is the creators of the widely successful battle royal game Fortnite, which is also seen as a Metaverse platform. While Epic Games isn’t necessarily pro-crypto or NFTs, the CEO said the firm isn’t looking to enforce any views on the subject on its users:

“Developers should be free to decide how to build their games, and you are free to decide whether to play them. I believe stores and operating system makers shouldn’t interfere by forcing their views onto others. We definitely won’t.”

Developers should be free to decide how to build their games, and you are free to decide whether to play them. I believe stores and operating system makers shouldn’t interfere by forcing their views onto others. We definitely won’t.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 21, 2022

In response to the post, Twitter user @Low5ive asked Sweeney Epic Games’ policy on prohibiting “hateful/discriminatory content” differs from this. In response, Sweeney suggested that Epic Games does make “editorial” judgements, but NFTs don’t currently fall under them.

“A store could choose to make no such judgments and host anything that's legal, or choose to draw the line at mainstream acceptable norms as we do, or accept only games that conform to the owner's personal beliefs,” he said.

The NFT ban by Mojang Studios has left one particular project dubbed “NFT Worlds” with a major problem to solve, given that it was built on one of Minecraft’s open source servers.

The community driven play-to-earn (P2E) platform has an entire crypto and NFT ecosystem built around it, with its NFTs generating 51,000 Ether (ETH), or $80.8 million worth of trading volume to date. However, since the news dropped, the floor price of its NFTs has dropped from 3.33 ETH to 1.01 ETH at the time of writing, while its native token WRLD has plunged by 55% within that time frame.

After the Mojang announcement, the NFT Worlds team stated it is now “brainstorming solutions” on how to move forward. The team mentioned that it is working to get in contact with Minecraft to see if a possible solution can be found, otherwise a pivot to a “Minecraft-like game engine” or GameFi platform has been outlined as possible options.

We've just shared the following announcement on our Discord regarding the current @Minecraft & @nftworldsNFT situation. pic.twitter.com/ARbKABRK4A
— NFT Worlds (@nftworldsNFT) July 20, 2022