Home-building simulator Hometopia has officially delayed its release and announced its move to the Metaverse. The news broke directly from the developer in a post on Medium, linked on Twitter.
In the post, developer The Isn’t Company outlined the new direction of the game and a new release date: March 2022. Hometopia will now move into the VR space and become part of the Metaverse. This isn’t new territory for the company. In 2016 the developer created a VR Metaverse of their own, called Circ.
As part of the move, Hometopia will now incorporate a blockchain ledger to record the ownership of various homes created within Hometopia. What’s more, the announcement revealed the new capacity of players to play as they earn, with an NFT called Builders Passes.
The announcement also revealed that Hometopia is no longer available through Steam. This is likely related to Steam’s banning of games incorporating NFTs and Cryptocurrency. As per the developer’s post, if you no longer want to play Hometopia or use the homes you create in the game, you can sell your Builders Pass. The Isn’t Company goes on to detail how this feature would be impossible on Steam. To play Hometopia on release, you’ll have to purchase it from The Isn’t Company website.
In a follow-up post, the developer explained that the game would still have a lot of the promised features and outlined that there would still be career mode, sandbox, and multiplayer that wouldn’t feature Earn-as-you-play or NFTs.
With the game’s removal from the Steam platform, the developers may see a fall in their potential playerbase. Steam remains one of the largest publishing platforms in PC gaming, and many will not be swayed away from it by the lure of earn-as-you-play gameplay.
If you’re looking for more home-building games and guides, check out BitLife House Flipper Challenge Guide on Pro Game Guides.
