Yesterday Team17—the studio behind the classic Worms series—announced it was getting into the NFT space, teaming up with a third party to release “collectible digital artwork based on one of the most beloved IPs in indie games”. A day later, that plan is in the bin.

The idea was for Team17 to license the Worms brand to a company called Reality Gaming, who would dress the worms up in stupid outfits and sell them as NFTs, all the while calling it an “art project”.

Not only was the move criticised by fans and media alike, it also quickly affected Team17’s business operations, with Going Under developers Aggro Crab issuing a statement saying they would no longer be working with the publisher:

Yooka-Laylee’s Playtonic Games, who have also had previous games published with Team17, did much the same thing:

As did Ghost Town Games, the studio behind the wildly-popular Overcooked series:

Who knows how many further reservations were expressed behind closed doors, but here we are, only a day later, and Team17 just issued the following statement:

TEAM17 TO END METAWORMS NFT PROJECT

Team17 is today announcing an end to the MetaWorms NFT project. We have listened to our teamsters, development partners, and our games’ communities, and the concerns they’ve expressed, and have therefore taken the decision to step back from the NFT space.

Please know that all parties involved would have known there would be negative feedback from fans, it’s impossible to be operating in the space in 2022 and not see that coming. So any talk about coming to the decision only after listening to the “community’s” response is bullshit; it’s the blowback from “development partners” and even their own employees that brought about this backflip.

As John said yesterday, Team17 has been doing pretty well lately, so well in fact that they’ve spent almost $200 million on acquisitions over the last year alone. They did not need to do this!