Pixelmon was marketed as the triple A quality game in NFT Space. It was so highly anticipated that the project gained around a stunning $70 million by selling NFTs in a short timespan.
The project launched with a Dutch auction. NFT enthusiasts and speculators bought unhatched eggs for as much as 3 ETH a piece.
That’s right: people were buying NFTs without even knowing what Pixelmon they would get, which sounds ridiculous and it actually is.
This resulted in a lot of controversy directly caused by the Pixelmon reveal. How could it have gone so awfully wrong?
What is Pixelmon?
Pixelmon is trying to build an Open-World RPG NFT Adventurer game. You can train, trade, fight & evolve your Pixelmon. As the name suggests, it is inspired by Pokémon.
The Pixelmon (generation 1) NFT functions as the center of the Pixelmon metaverse. The collection consists of 10,000 NFTs and provides the owner access to land drops, token airdrops, in-game earning and other things.
The game that is being developed should look a bit like a cross-over of Minecraft, Pokémon, Zelda and Genshin Impact.
Video of the Pixelmon expectation
The Pixelmon NFTs collection
You can view, buy and trade the NFTs of the Collection on OpenSea.
So.. What happened with the Pixelmon demo reveal?
The developers launched a demo, built on the Unity engine. All you could do is run around. In their defense: iT iS jUsT a DeMo. Here is a gameplay video.
However, there were not even traces of trading, battling, or capturing functionalities yet. Some Pixelmon just looked like regular animals.
Immediately social media and especially Twitter blew up because of people criticizing the revealed Pixelmon and showing theirs.
The general sentiment regarding the reveal was that the project is, like many NFT projects, just another cashgrab a.k.a scam. That is fully understandable since the demo and reveal was unacceptable.
The floor price (the cheapest Pixelmon for trade) plummeted. Right now the cheapest Pixelmon is 0.569 ETH.
We love to show you some more Pixelmon users reported:
Is the Pixelmon project really that bad?
This is what the Architect of Pixelmon, Syber, has to say about it.
Further in the thread, he says: “OpenSea has limitations to their 3D compatibility so we had to continuously downscale this (in 3D) to fit what they could handle”.
This explains why the Pixelmon looking so awfully bad. When you see the Pixelmon in-game, they definitely look a lot better. Is it a storm in a teacup, and will Pixelmon actually be that ‘AAA’ NFT-game or not?
Facts are: the Art was rushed and with that, the Trust was crushed. It will definitely take some time and more effort to make sure the game and artwork meet the high expectations of Pixelmon owners.
How Pixelmon will recover from this fail
The founder responded to the negative feedback by saying that although he had received a lot of hate and threats on Twitter, he will not go anywhere and continue the NFT game project.
The funds from the initial NFT-drop will be used to build the game, which is being built by a professional studio that has over 500 employees.
Here is a direct link to the Pixelmon Gitbook.
All in all it surely looks like an money grab or ‘asset flip’. The team really needs to step it up if they want to make up for this.
The future of the Pixelmon NFT game
Many believe that Syber’s apology and promise to improve are insincere and that the team has no real intent to produce high-quality NFTs or a high-quality game.
Given what’s been shown of the project so far, their skepticism is clearly more than fair.
We will see what the future brings. For now, owners can only laugh it off or sell at a loss.
Pixelmon is still under development.
If you need more laughs, make sure to check out the “NFTs and Metaverse”-memes and the rest of our Crypto Memes series.
Update on the Pixelmon Controvery / Fail / Scam
In December, Syber tweeted: “Pixelmon is the next blue chip. This is financial advice. Don’t do your own research.”
There is more.
- Pixelmon is actually the name of a popular Minecraft mod
- The founder went by the name ‘dippysucks’ before he started Pixelmon. Does that sound professional?
- Some of the Pixelmon assets appear to have been based on Unity stock models.
Syber in the Pixelmon Discord server during an AMA: “We bought a lot of assets for our prototype on Unity … they were not used in our NFTS.” and “Our intention was never to use these assets in the final game.”
The Pixelmon Saga continues..
How can controvery like the Pixelmon project be prevented?
Share your thoughts about NFT asset-flips, cashgrabs and rugpulls.
Last Updated on 03/04/2022 by delta
