又一涉及加密货币的游戏崩溃——已经真的没有钱了

《不驯之岛》（Untamed Isles）作为 "怪物驯服回合制MMORPG "游戏，因引入了Kickstarter（KICKS币）而获得巨大成功，但近期由于加密货币崩溃而被 "暂时关闭"–KICKS币支持者被告知已经没有钱可以退款兑现了。

在2021年的KICKS币活动中，《不驯之岛》获得了527,000美元的支持，是其最初目标的四倍多。它承诺提供一个完全开放的世界，"有独特的区域供朋友们聚集、练习PVP、交易、养育怪物、清除地牢，并通过开放的语音系统进行近距离通信，在不驯之岛进行相关社交活动"。

它还吹嘘与Direwolf（WOLF币）合作的 "游戏赚钱 "模式，这将使游戏中的大多数物品和所有怪物都被 "代币化"，并在各种市场或游戏中的拍卖行进行购买、出售或交易。不幸的是，基于加密货币做出的所有承诺是之后一切问题的来源。

开发商Phat Loot工作室在Steam上写道："为了完成这个项目，我们70多名工作人员坚持不懈地工作了2年多，来完成我们都梦寐以求的游戏。"，"然而事实是，开发成本很高，在我们通往成功的路上有很多坎坷。自从我们在2020年开始这段旅程以来，经济形势在宏观角度乃至具体到加密货币形势方面都发生了巨大的变化，我们对目前的市场情况已经没有信心。我们耗尽了财政资源，此刻也无法继续进行下去了。"

Phat Loot称"游戏倚重加密货币市场，并在支持们积极的投入下迅速扩张"，这使得它在加密市场崩溃的时候难以维持。《不驯之岛》不是一个基于加密货币的游戏，但来自加密货币投资者的资金对于完成游戏以及之后的推出游戏是十分必要的。

"与许多在风暴中陷入困境的项目不同，我们实际上有一个伟大的游戏设计，可以靠自己的力量站起来，"该工作室说。"我们相信《不驯之岛》近期的问题将在之后某个阶段得到解决，但在加密货币的情况得到解决之前，我们也只能将这个项目的开发搁置起来。"

"加密货币形势不乐观 "是对市场崩溃的轻描淡写的描述，目前加密货币已经跌至多年来的价值最低点。全球经济普遍萎靡是影响的一部分，但更大的问题是加密货币固有的风险和不稳定的性质。正如我们在7月发生的2亿美元的Nomad币抢劫案之后所说的那样，数以百万计的美元在黑客攻击中丢失，开始让人感觉像是每周一次的事件。即使不涉及犯罪行为，加密货币在基本道德规范上也立不住脚。例如，上周，Riot Blockchain（与《英雄联盟》工作室Riot Games无关）通过利用德克萨斯州的国家补贴，免费有效地开采了700万美元的比特币，尽管德克萨斯州正处于持续的能源危机中。

宽泛的说，大多数人对加密货币和NFT的反感也越来越强烈。3月，在开发商被一家加密货币交易所收购后，免费自动驾驶游戏《故事书大作战》（Storybook Brawl）被审查机关轰炸。5月，维基百科宣布它将不再接受加密货币捐赠。哪怕是受雇帮助设计《不驯之岛》的战斗系统的Wolfe Glick（2016年口袋妖怪世界冠军）也在推特上在发声反对NFT。

Untamed Isles (opens in new tab), a "monster-taming turn-based MMORPG" that found major success on Kickstarter, has been put "on hiatus" because of the crypto crash (opens in new tab)—Kickstarter backers are being told that there's no money left for refunds.
The 2021 Kickstarter campaign (opens in new tab) for Untamed Isles rang up a remarkable $527,000 in backing—more than four times its initial goal. It promised a fully open world with "unique areas for friends to gather, practice PVP, trade, breed monsters, clear dungeons, and play through the story of untamed isles socially with open voice proximity communications." 
It also boasted a "play to earn" model in partnership with Direwolf, which would enable most of the items and all of the monsters in the game to be "tokenized" and bought, sold, or traded in various marketplaces or the in-game auction house. Unfortunately, the commitment to crypto is where it all went wrong.
"To work on this project we brought more than 70 staff members on board and we were working relentlessly for more than 2 years to build the game we all were dreaming about," developer Phat Loot Studios wrote on Steam (opens in new tab). "The truth is that the cost of development is high and there were lots of bumps on our way to this moment. Since we started the journey in 2020, the economic landscape has changed dramatically both generally and specifically for cryptocurrency, and we are not confident in the current market. We ran out of financial resources and we can’t carry on the development at this moment."
Phat Loot said it "leaned into the crypto market and expanded rapidly off the back of the positive interest," which left it in an untenable position when the crash came. Untamed Isles is not primarily a crypto-based game, it added, but funding from crypto investors is necessary to get the game finished and launched. 
"Unlike many of the projects that have floundered 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're confident it will be at some stage—then we have to hibernate development on this project."
The "crypto situation" is an understated description of the market collapse that has sunk cryptocurrencies to their lowest values in years. External factors ranging from general global economic malaise to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had an impact, but the bigger issue is the inherently risky and unstable nature of cryptocurrency. Millions of dollars have been lost in hacks that, as we said following the $200 million Nomad heist (opens in new tab) in July, are starting to feel like weekly events. Even when criminality isn't involved, the basic ethics of crypto are iffy at best: Last week, for instance, Riot Blockchain (unrelated to League of Legends studio Riot Games, for the record) was able to mine $7 million in Bitcoin effectively for free by taking advantage of state subsidies in Texas, despite the fact that Texas is in the midst of an ongoing energy crisis.
There's also a growing backlash against cryptocurrencies and NFTs among wider audiences: Free-to-play autobattler Storybook Brawl was review-bombed (opens in new tab) in March after the developer was bought by a cryptocurrency exchange, and in May Wikipedia announced that it will no longer accept cryptocurrency donations.
Phat Loot explained in a livestream last week that things started to go sideways when MMOByte posted a video in July apologizing for supporting Untamed Isles and disavowing crypto games in general: Host Stix said in the video that he is "very strongly against those specific types of games."
Another blow was suffered when 2016 Pokemon World Champion Wolfe Glick, who had been hired to help design the Untamed Isles combat system, appeared to speak out against the NFT aspect on Twitter.
Originally the game intended to implement NFTs, but after I spoke with the team (and some external factors) they decided to move away from it. There are no crypto or NFT features implemented into the game itself – the only remnant is an (optional) external marketplaceAugust 5, 2022
Phat Loot said those events triggered a cascade effect that caused other mainstream media companies to cancel planned coverage; influencers who had been lined up to push the game also started to pull out. Pre-sales fell well short of anticipated levels—just 50 presales were made, rather than the hoped-for 2,000-3,000. 
The more significant long-term issue, though, was 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 raising and selling of the Phat Loot Token which we were working on in the background," the studio said during the stream. "It was all going really really well. Then the crypto crash occurred and we lost that funding very very quickly. The investors pulled out as they watched the market crashing—and to be fair, they're right to do so because these are very uncertain times in the global economy."
Phat Loot had decided to launch Untamed Isles in a more bare-bones state in October, ahead of its original schedule, in order to get it out (and start generating revenue) as soon as possible. But the studio was burning through "close to NZ$100,000 ($62,700) per week" in wages and costs, and developers realized that they were "likely not going to be able to make 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 be given refunds, individual backers on Kickstarter and Backerkit are out of luck. The Kickstarter campaign promised that full refunds would be issued to all backers if Untamed Isles failed to launch—and numerous backers have asked for one—but an FAQ at untamedisles.com (opens in new tab) says that refunds will not be available because, well, there's no money. 
That's gone over about as well as you might expect (which is to say, not well at all) and there's also quite a few backers upset that the project was based on cryptocurrency in the first place.
"Why on earth would you invest in cryptocurrency?" one backer wrote (opens in new tab). "It's fake money! It's all a scam! If I knew that was where you were leaning, I never would have joined. If refunds are happening, I want mine please. Ye gods, when will people realize crypto is a huge scam?"
"Refund ta. Didn't back this for my money to be involved with crypto," another wrote.
That confusion about Untamed Isle's reliance on cryptocurrency apparently arose from the fact that no mention is made of it until more than halfway through the Kickstarter campaign description—it's there, but minimized. Kickstarter backers aren't the only ones who complained about that lack of transparency. Stix of MMOByte made the same complaint in his video, saying that he wasn't aware of the crypto integration because "it isn't until you scroll about 60% down the page that they even mention 'play to earn.'"
The presence of the game on Steam (opens in new tab) may also contribute to the confusion, because Valve banned all games incorporating NFTs or cryptocurrency (opens in new tab) from Steam last year. Its presence could 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 its long-term future on the storefront, but gamers coming to the project through Steam would be given no indication of the presence of cryptocurrency integration.
In a statement released today (opens in new tab), Phat Loot said that it did not invest money raised through crowdfunding and "traditional investment" into cryptocurrencies, but that it was forced to stop development because of the withdrawal of investors spooked by the crypto crash and "the negative sentiment associated with web3-integrated games." But to my thinking, that opens the door to questions about the timing of the announcement: We wrote about the cryptocurrency market "experiencing an unprecedented crash" back in May (opens in new tab), yet Phat Loot launched the preorder campaign (opens in new tab) on August 1, just ten days before putting it all on hold, providing no indication that the game was in trouble.
Phat Loot founders said they are now "looking at ways to salvage both the core studio and the game so that it can be completed and released down the track along with other possible titles." There's no sign of when that might happen, however: The studio said in its most recent livestream that conventional publishers are put off by the crypto, while crypto investors aren't doing anything because of the crumbled state of the market. 
Interestingly, Phat Loot said that it likely could have raised enough money to get Untamed Isles to launch—the problem is what happens after that. "We can't get the traction or following through marketing and there's no revenue in crypto right now," the team said. "How much money can you raise until you launch the game and it ends up burning a hole in our team, and we lose it?"
I've reached out to Phat Loot for more information on the state of Untamed Isles, and will update if I receive a reply.