Blankos Block Party: First NFT game in Epic Games Store

On Thursday, renowned American video game production company Epic Games announced the launch of its first NFT game on its Epic Games store, Blankos Block Party.

According to its creators, Mythical Games, the beta version of Blankos Block Party has over one million players already. It was released in 2020. The NFT characters and accessories, which can be traded through the in-game store, are this shooting game’s big attraction.

Until September 28, when the first season of the full game with new graphic and navigational upgrades will be launched, the game is already available for free download in the “early access” version.

Epic Games offered details on the new launch

Notably, Epic Games said in the announcement that no mining would be needed to produce or integrate NFTs into the Marketplace because Blankos Block Party operates on a private blockchain built on EOSIO (formerly Antelope). It reads:

“Blankos Block Party is built on a private, permissioned blockchain based on the EOSIO infrastructure that uses a Proof of Authority consensus model that is more environmentally friendly and sustainable than the Proof of Work model. Minting NFTs and integrating the Marketplace via our platform does not require any mining.”

It is important to note that, in contrast to most NFT games, Blankos Block Party allows players to play, buy, and sell NFTs internally, while it also allows Uphold accounts.

One of the few gaming firms with a positive outlook on the metaverse and NFT games is Epic Games. They first revealed a $2 billion fund to create a metaverse in April 2021.

At the time, Epic Games—which is the company behind Fortnite and the Unreal Engine graphics engine—said that with the funds from Sony and KIRKBI, it would be able to develop new experiences based on its most popular games and challenge Decentraland and The Sandbox.

There will probably be other NFT games released on the Epic Games Store in addition to Blankos Block Party. The studio is currently collaborating with Gala Games, a Web3 gaming company that is hard at work on an NFT-based shooter.