Blockchain games are not a new thing, and there were hits such as "Ether Cat" two or three years ago. But as Metavalse has heated up this year, blockchain games tied to popular concepts have quickly ushered in a second spring.
Especially with the emergence of star products such as "Axie Infinity" with million-day live, the integration of blockchain technology into game products has once again become a global hot direction. But the problem is that NFTs and cryptocurrencies are inherently speculative, and there are not a few opportunistic people who use the ambiguous Metavalse concept.
On December 13, CCTV's second set of "Punctual Finance" program exposed the latest blockchain game scam in the report, which caused discussion among the majority of netizens and sounded the alarm bell for the game industry in advance.
The program pointed out that there are many blockchain games in the market under the banner of "meta-universe", claiming to achieve nearly 100% of the monthly investment income by playing games. However, before investing, you need to pay more than 6,000 yuan of service fees, and there is no contract protection, which is essentially using the funds of the late entrants to fill the hole.
Play games to make a lot of money, with a monthly income of nearly 100%
Unlike traditional game products, "Play to Earn" is the main attraction of blockchain games, and most players often start to contact products in order to obtain economic benefits. In the longer term, virtual currencies and NFTs have always been regarded as one of the foundations of the open Metavalse economic system, and blockchain games also have greater investment value.
Taking this as an opportunity, there have also been many meta-universe blockchain game scams in China that claim to make money while playing, "invest 300,000 yuan, and you can earn 140,000 yuan in two weeks".
According to reports, a company called "Meta-Universe Research Institute" said that their blockchain game can invest in financial management as long as it spends money to buy equipment, and stressed: "No matter which equipment you buy, the return cycle is about 22-40 days, and the daily income reaches 3,000 yuan - 4,000 yuan; from August to now, no customer has lost money in this game." ”
However, the company's director said that to participate in this blockchain game, you must first exchange the money for the virtual currency USDT, and then convert it into in-game virtual currency. Not only that, but if you want to invest here, you must also go through the "guidance" of the company.
The so-called guidance means that you need to pay a service fee of more than 6,000 yuan and share it into 20% of the monthly income. The minimum investment is generally more than 20,000 yuan, but there is no need to sign any contract, the company gave the reason for "things are customer, signed a contract, the customer will be restricted." ”
At the same time, the report also mentioned another studio that provides investment services for the game, the main business is to help players redeem the corresponding tokens, and assist in the synthesis of their investment equipment. They similarly promised a gimmick of nearly 100 percent return on their investment and said they charged a 20 percent "escrow fee."
In this regard, the director of Shanghai Xinchang Law Firm believes that under the circumstance that the relevant state departments explicitly prohibit the issuance of documents, the company or specific entity as a platform party to help investors and players to carry out the operation, in essence, may be suspected of criminal offenses. At the same time, he also mentioned that this is not an investment and financial management agreement, which does not play any protective role for investors and is risky.
A professor at the School of Advanced Finance of Shanghai Jiao Tong University said bluntly: This is a new type of scam under the banner of meta-universe. He pointed out that when domestic investors' funds are converted into virtual currency, it cannot be restrained, and the promises given by the platform are completely untrustworthy.
What's more, from the perspective of the program screen, the development cost of such games is extremely low. The screen is rough and simple, and it only needs to be clicked and operated with the mouse, which is more like a web game. Obviously, this is not a blockchain game in the usual sense, but a speculative product of simply using popular concepts to circle money, and this kind of "hanging sheep's head and selling dog meat" has naturally attracted massive criticism from netizens.
Steam banned blockchain games, and South Korea refused to review "P2E" games
Domestic popularity is not unique, free from the shackles of the regulatory level, overseas game companies are sparing no effort to die on the blockchain game.
On December 8, Ubisoft posted on its official website to launch its own game blockchain platform "Ubisoft Quartz", "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint" will become its first AAA game with NFT elements; in addition, NCsoft announced that it will launch an NFT game from Play to Earn next year, and said that all games will join the Play to Earn model.
Under the global wind, there is naturally no shortage of news such as capital scams abroad. For example, in a previous NFT project called "Evolved Apes", the person in charge of the circle of money ran away.
Evolved Apes is a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs that were developed and purchased by an anonymous developer on the marketplace OpenSea. Early in the project, the developers promised that every character in the collection would be a character in the fighting game of the same name, Evolved Apes. But just a week after Evolutioned Apes went live, the person in charge disappeared and took away the proceeds of 798 Ethereum (about $3 million).
It is based on the huge risks of blockchain games, in October this year, Steam explicitly refused to list blockchain games, and on September 30, it first removed the blockchain game "Light Nite".
Unexpectedly, also resisting blockchain games is South Korea, which is keen on Play to Earn. In fact, South Korea strictly bans games with "speculative" and refuses to censor products that contain NFTs, so most games are based on their own company's blockchain platform.
For example, WEMIX, a blockchain platform named "P2E bellwether" BY Korean media, will have 100 blockchain games by the end of next year. At present, it not only contains the world's millions of online "Mir4", as well as "Everytown", "WIND Runner" and other game IP that has been downloaded more than 10 million times; the game "Project SA" developed by Lightcon has also recently announced its participation.
Although the Korean factory is adding blockchain with great fanfare, this does not mean that the local regulatory authorities are completely laissez-faire for the Play to Earn game.
Recently, the P2E mobile game "Infinite Breakthrough Three Kingdoms Chronicles" that has been ranked in the top 10 of the Korean best-seller list, in order to provide Play to Earn services in South Korea, directly registered on the App Store without applying to the Game Commission for rating and rating. At present, it has been punished by the South Korean regulatory authorities for "canceling the grading assessment", and may soon be removed from the shelves of major Korean markets.
Gameplay-based, the next direction of blockchain gaming
Behind the CCTV exposure scam case, it is inevitable to expose an obvious problem, most of the blockchain games are simple and rough, and the gameplay is monotonous, resulting in players focusing more on game token speculation.
At the end of the day, gameplay should come first, and vice versa is just a refined blockchain product. Just like the early "Ether Cat", its pet swapping gameplay is only to use in-game props as an intermediary for virtual currency exchange.
Therefore, insufficient gameplay, user stickiness and loyalty are very low, which is the biggest pain point of blockchain games. Once the revenue starts to decline, there will be a large loss of users, but fortunately this phenomenon has changed. Taking "Axie Infinity" as an example, the current gameplay has made great progress and is more perfect than the previous NFT games, and even held related events.
Similarly, Thetan Arena, which mimics Red Dead Redemption, has made significant improvements in gameplay and overall quality, even as a purely casual competitive game. As a result, the "world's first PLAY to earn MOBA game" gained millions of players in just two days after its launch, topping the multinational iOS free list.
It has to be mentioned that there is also "Mir4", which has been at the top of the Steam online number list for many years, and the game is because of the blockchain gameplay fire. On December 9, One of Mir4's legendary items, the Dragon Sword, was traded for 160,000 DRACO coins (about 100 million won, or 538,000 yuan).
Still, Mir4 is a great next-generation MMO game. Based on the powerful expressiveness of Unreal Engine 4 and the mature gameplay design, the game can be called the head player in the Hallyu MMORPG. Before joining the blockchain, "Mir4" also won the 1st place in the Korean iOS free list and the 8th best-seller list by gameplay alone, which shows that its popularity is not completely dependent on the support of the Play to Earn model.
Under the wave of global blockchain game resurgence, how to get rid of external stereotypes, draw a line with immature scams, and become an excellent soil to nurture and nourish Metavalse still requires long-term efforts of global game manufacturers.
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