“Whoopsie!” Riot wrote in an unusual statement published to Valorant’s official German Twitter account last night (thanks, PC Gamer). The climbdown came after an illustration posted to the account showed Killjoy in an art gallery, gazing at a picture by German artist and NFT seller Martin Houra. The artwork in question is an NFT, and Houra has previously put it up for sale using the planet burning cryptocurrency Ethereum. (It’s ironic, however, that this NFT has apparently been right-click-saved for use in Riot’s artwork.) Fans said the post by Riot suggested that computer whizz character Killjoy was also into NFTs and their planet-burning crypto. “We’re always trying to give you new experiences and interesting facts on our local channels, including a look at Killjoy and her hometown of Berlin,” Riot wrote in response. “Since Killjoy loves programming, we wanted to introduce you to computer generated art from around the world. However, we were not aware that the selected work was an NFT. In no way did we intend to include NFTs as part of Killjoy’s work and hobbies.” The original tweet of the artwork has now been deleted. Not all developers are against NFTs, however. Yesterday, Atari announced it would sell a range of giftable “surprise” NFT lootboxes to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
