Gabe Newell thinks “there’s a bunch of get rich quick schemes around metaverse”

Valve president Gabe Newell recently spoke out about the metaverse, and is not entirely sold on the concept overall.

Speaking to PC Gamer, when asked if he believes metaverse trends are pushing technology forward, Newell responded, “There’s a bunch of get rich quick schemes around metaverse. Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, and they’ve apparently never played an MMO. They’re like, ‘Oh, you’ll have this customizable avatar.’ And it’s like, well… go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn’t a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you’re, you know, inventing.”

Later on, Newell apparently came across as more optimistic about the metaverse, saying that he is sure “it’ll get sorted out” eventually. Though he does still think that some will be in it for the money. “Obviously the gaming industry has been exploring these technologies for a long time,” Newell said. “It will be interesting to see if anybody who’s sort of coming to the party late has much to add, rather than a desire to have a whole bunch of people give them a bunch of money for magic reasons.”

Last year, Valve banned the sale of NFT games on Steam. Age of Rust, an NFT game, at the time said that they believed Steam was doing this because “Steam’s point of view is that items have value and they don’t allow items that can have real-world value on their platform.”

Now, Newell has also spoken to Eurogamer on the topic of NFTs, including his thoughts on them. “The things that were being done were super sketchy,” Newell said in reference to the NFT and blockchain games being sold on the platform. “And there was some illegal shit that was going on behind the scenes, and you’re just like, yeah, this is bad.” Newell then went on to say that he thinks “blockchains as a technology are a great technology,” but that right now the way it’s used is “pretty sketchy.”

Newell also touched on cryptocurrency, noting that “50 percent of the cryptocurrency paid for transactions were fraudulent.” And he also noted how volatile cryptocurrency is, and how rapidly it can change, adding “it just wasn’t a good method. The people who are currently active in that space are not usually good actors.”

In other news, Knockout City is going free-to-play, with EA no longer publishing, and developer Velan Studios now self-publishing.