Electronic Arts CEO doesn’t commit to NFTs on latest investor call

Andrew Wilson, Electronic Arts CEO commented on the NFTs and their role in gaming during Tuesday’s earnings call. Wilson was ambivalent towards NFTs, saying that Electronic Arts would continue to “evaluate [non-fungible tokens] over time,” but that the company was not focused on them as a priority.

Some gaming industries have adopted NFTs as a new component. Big publishers are now incorporating the technology into their games. NFTs are a token that is uniquely created on Ethereum. This token can be used to identify the owner of a digital item. So far, NFTs have been implemented in games like Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

This promotion has received mostly negative reactions. GSC Game World was the creators of STALKER 2 – Heart of ChernobylNFTs were briefly mentioned by, but they had to rescind their announcement due to outrage. Worms publisher Team17 also announced and then immediately cancelled a NFT project after backlash from studios like Playtonic and Aggro Crab, which wrote: “We believe NFTs cannot be environmentally friendly, or useful, and are just an overall fucking grift.”

On the earnings call, Wilson talked about the idea of “collectability” in relation to NFTs: “The way I look at this is, collectability is really built on four key metrics. That’s around high-quality content, it’s around scarcity, it’s around proof of authenticity, and it’s around a group of people that find value in that content.”

Then Wilson went on to say that “collectability will continue to be an important part of our industry and the games and the experiences that we offer our players,” but he did not commit to any plans involving NFTs.

“Whether that’s part of NFTs and the blockchain, well, that remains to be seen,” Wilson said. “I think the way we think about it is, we want to deliver the best possible player experience we can. And so we’ll evaluate that over time, but right now, it’s not something that we’re driving hard against.”