Pristine Islands (opens in new tab)a “monster-taming turn-based MMORPG” that found major success on Kickstarter has been “paused” due to crypto crash (opens in new tab)—Kickstarter financiers are told there is no more money for repayments.
The Kickstarter 2021 campaign (opens in new tab) for Untamed Isles raised a remarkable $527,000 in backup — more than four times its original goal. It promised a completely open world with “unique areas for friends to gather, practice PVP, trade, breed monsters, clear dungeons, and socially play out the story of untamed islands with open voice-proximity communication.”
It also boasted a “play to earn” model in partnership with Direwolf, which allows most items and all monsters in the game to be “tokenized” and bought, sold or traded in various markets or the in-game auction house. Unfortunately, the dedication to crypto is where it all went wrong.
“To work on this project, we brought in over 70 employees and worked relentlessly for over 2 years to build the game we all dreamed of,” developer Phat Loot Studios wrote on Steam. (opens in new tab). “The truth is that development costs are high and there have been many bumps along the way to this point. Since we started the journey in 2020, the economic landscape has changed dramatically, both in general and for cryptocurrency specifically, and we don’t have any. confident in the current market. We ran out of financial resources and we can’t continue the development at the moment.”
Phat Loot said it “leaned into the crypto market and expanded rapidly thanks to positive interest rates”, leaving it in an unsustainable position when the crash came. Untamed Isles is not primarily a crypto-based game, but it will require funding from crypto investors to get the game finished and launched.
“Unlike many of the projects that have been stranded in the storm, we actually have a great game design that could stand on its own two feet,” the studio said. “But until the crypto situation is resolved – and we are confident it will be at some point – we will have to put development on this project into hibernation.”
The “crypto situation” is an understated description of the market collapse that has plunged cryptocurrencies to their lowest values in years. External factors ranging from general global economic slump to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had an impact, but the bigger problem is the inherently risky and unstable nature of cryptocurrency. Millions of dollars have been lost in hacks that, as we said after the $200 million Nomad heist (opens in new tab) in July, start to feel like weekly events. Even if there’s no crime involved, the basic ethic of crypto is questionable at best: last week, for example, Riot Blockchain (unrelated to League of Legends studio Riot Games, for the record) was able to effectively raise $ 7 million in Bitcoin to mine for free by taking advantage of state subsidies in Texas, despite Texas being in the midst of an ongoing energy crisis.
There is also a growing backlash against cryptocurrencies and NFTs among a wider audience: the free-to-play autobattler Storybook Brawl has been bombarded by reviews (opens in new tab) in March after the developer was bought by a cryptocurrency exchange, and in May Wikipedia announced it would no longer accept cryptocurrency donations.
Phat Loot explained in a livestream (opens in new tab) Things started to go sideways last week when MMOByte posted a video in July apologizing for supporting Untamed Isles and rejecting crypto games in general: Host Stix said in the video that he was “very strongly against those specific types of games.” is”.
Another blow was dealt when 2016 Pokemon World Champion Wolfe Glick, who was hired to help design the Untamed Isles battle system, appeared on Twitter to speak out against the NFT aspect.
Originally, the game was meant to implement NFTs, but after I talked to the team (and some outsiders), they decided to part ways with it. There are no crypto or NFT features implemented in the game itself – all that remains is an (optional) third-party marketplaceAugust 5, 2022
Phat Loot said these events created a cascade effect causing other mainstream media companies to cancel scheduled coverage; influencers queuing up to push the game also began to back down. Presales fell far short of the expected level, with only 50 presales being made, instead of the hoped-for 2,000-3,000.
However, the main long-term issue has been the impact of the crypto crash.
“We had some fantastic investors lined up to inject several more million dollars into the project through a variety of equity acquisitions and sales of the Phat Loot Token that we were working on in the background,” the studio said during the stream. “It all went really well. Then the crypto crash happened and we lost that funding very quickly. The investors pulled back as they watched the market crash – and to be fair, they are right to do that, because this These are very uncertain times in the global economy.”
Phat Loot had decided to launch Untamed Isles in October in a more bare-bones state, earlier than the original schedule, in order to get it out (and monetize) as soon as possible. But the studio was burning through “nearly NZ$100,000 ($62,700) a week” in wages and expenses, and developers realized they “probably wouldn’t be able to earn the revenue from our launch to keep the lights on. ”
Unfortunately, while investors were able to dodge the bullet and people who pre-purchased the game and Phat Loot Tokens will get refunds, individual backers on Kickstarter and Backerkit are out of luck. The Kickstarter campaign promised all backers would get full refunds if Untamed Isles didn’t launch — and countless backers have asked for it — but a FAQ on untamedisles.com (opens in new tab) says refunds won’t be available because, well, there’s no money.
That went about as well as you’d expect (i.e., not well at all) and there are also quite a few supporters upset that the project was primarily cryptocurrency-based.
“Why on earth would you invest in cryptocurrency?” a financier wrote (opens in new tab). “It’s fake money! It’s all a scam! If I had known you were I would never have joined. If refunds happen I want mine please. Gods, when will people realize that crypto is a massive scam? “
“Refund ta. I have not supported this for my money to be involved in crypto,” wrote another.
That confusion about Untamed Isle’s reliance on cryptocurrency apparently stemmed from the fact that it’s not mentioned until more than halfway through the Kickstarter campaign description – it’s there, but minimized. Kickstarter supporters aren’t the only ones complaining about that lack of transparency. MMOByte’s Stix made the same complaint in his video, saying he was unaware of the crypto integration because “it’s only when you scroll down about 60% on the page that they even mention ‘play to earn’.”
The game’s presence on Steam (opens in new tab) may also add to the confusion, as Valve banned all games that contain NFTs or cryptocurrency (opens in new tab) from Steam last year. Its presence can be explained by the fact that the Steam listing makes absolutely no mention of the cryptocurrency integration: hiding that aspect of the game doesn’t seem great for the long-term future in the store, but gamers looking through Steam coming to the project would give no indication of the presence of cryptocurrency integration.
In a statement released today (opens in new tab)Phat Loot said it did not invest money raised through crowdfunding and “traditional investments” in cryptocurrencies, but was forced to halt development due to the withdrawal of investors shocked by the crypto crash and “the negative sentiment.” associated with web3 integrated games.” But in my opinion, that opens the door to questions about the timing of the announcement: we wrote in May about the cryptocurrency market “experiencing an unprecedented crash” (opens in new tab)but Phat Loot launched the pre-order campaign (opens in new tab) on August 1, just ten days before it was all put on hold, which was no indication that the game was in trouble.
The Phat Loot founders said they are now “looking at ways to save both the core studio and the game so it can be completed and released along with other potential titles.” There’s no sign of when that could happen, though: the studio said in its most recent livestream that conventional publishers are being put off by the crypto, while crypto investors are doing nothing due to the crumbling state of the market.
Interestingly, Phat Loot said it probably could have raised enough money to launch Untamed Isles – the problem is what happens next. “We can’t get the traction or following of marketing and there is currently no revenue in crypto,” the team said. “How much money can you raise until you start the game and it eventually burns a hole in our team, and we lose it?”
I have contacted Phat Loot for more information on the state of Untamed Isles, and will update when I get a response.
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