Untamed Islands (opens in a new tab)a “monster-taming turn-based MMORPG” that found great success on Kickstarter has been put on “pause” due to crypto crash (opens in a new tab)– Kickstarter backers are told there is no money left for refunds.
Kickstarter campaign 2021 (opens in a new tab) for Untamed Isles received a remarkable $527,000 in support – 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 play through the story of Untamed Islands socially with open voice communication.”
It also boasted a “play to earn” model in partnership with Direwolf, which would allow most of the items and all monsters in the game to be “tokenized” and bought, sold or traded on various marketplaces or in-game. auction house. Unfortunately, the commitment to crypto is where it all went wrong.
“To work on this project we brought with us more than 70 employees and we worked relentlessly for more than 2 years to build the game we all dreamed of,” wrote developer Phat Loot Studios on Steam (opens in a new tab). “The truth is that the cost of development is high and there were many bumps in the road to this moment. Since we started our journey in 2020, the economic landscape has changed dramatically both in general and specifically for cryptocurrency, and we are not sure in today’s market. We ran out of financial resources and we cannot continue the development now.”
Phat Loot said it “leaned into the crypto market and expanded rapidly on the back of the positive interest,” leaving it in an unsustainable position when the crash came. Untamed Isles is not primarily a crypto-based game, it added, but funding from crypto investors is needed 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 can stand on its own two feet,” the studio said. “But until the crypto situation is resolved – and we’re sure it will be at some point – then we have to put development on this project on hold.”
The “crypto situation” is an understatement for the market collapse that has plunged 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 biggest issue is the inherently risky and volatile nature of cryptocurrency. Millions of dollars have been lost in hacks that, as we said after the Nomad robbery of 200 million dollars (opens in a new tab) in July, are starting to feel like weekly events. Even when crime isn’t involved, the basic ethics of crypto are dubious at best: Last week, for example, Riot Blockchain (not related to League of Legends studio Riot Games, for the record) was able to mine 7 million dollars in Bitcoin effectively for free by leveraging 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 a wider audience: Free-to-play autobattler Storybook Brawl bombed with reviews (opens in a 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 dissing crypto games in general: Host Stix said in the video that he is “very strongly against the specific types of game.”
Another blow was dealt when 2016 Pokémon World Champion Wolfe Glick, who had been hired to help design the Untamed Isles battle system, appeared to speak out against the NFT aspect on Twitter.
Originally the game intended to implement NFTs, but after I talked to the team (and some external factors) they decided to move away from that. There are no crypto or NFT features implemented in the game itself – the only remaining one is an (optional) external marketplace5 August 2022
Phat Loot said these events triggered a cascading effect that caused other mainstream media companies to cancel planned coverage; influencers who had been lining up to push the game also began pulling out. Advance sales fell well below expected levels – only 50 advance sales were made, instead of the 2,000-3,000 they had hoped for.
However, the more significant long-term issue was the impact of the crypto crash.
“We had some amazing investors lined up to inject several million dollars into the project through a series of equity raises and Phat Loot Token sales that we were working on in the background,” the studio said during the stream. “It was all going very well. Then the crypto crash happened and we lost that funding very, very quickly. The investors pulled out as they saw the market crash – and to be fair they are right to do so because these are very uncertain times in the global the 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 they “probably wouldn’t 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 receive 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 did not launch – and many backers have requested one – but a FAQ at untamedisles.com (opens in a new tab) says refunds won’t be available because, well, there’s no money.
It’s gone about as well as you’d expect (that is, not well at all), and there are also quite a few backers who are upset that the project was based on cryptocurrency in the first place.
“Why on earth would you invest in cryptocurrency?” wrote a supporter (opens in a new tab). “It’s fake money! It’s all a scam! If I knew that’s where you were leaning, I never would have joined. If refunds happen, I’d like mine. Gods, when will people realize that crypto is a big scam?”
“Refund take. Didn’t support this for my money to be involved in crypto,” wrote another.
That confusion about Untamed Isle’s reliance on cryptocurrency apparently arose from the fact that there’s no mention 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 from MMOByte made the same complaint in his video, saying he wasn’t aware of the crypto integration because “it’s not until you scroll about 60% down the page that they even mention ‘play to earn’.”
The presence of the game on Steam (opens in a new tab) may also add to the confusion, because Valve banned any games that contain NFTs or cryptocurrency (opens in a 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 does not bode well for its long-term future on the storefront, but players who come to the project through Steam will not be given any indication of its presence of cryptocurrency integration.
In a statement published today (opens in a new tab), Phat Loot said that it did not invest money raised through crowdfunding and “traditional investment” in cryptocurrencies, but that it was forced to stop development due to the withdrawal of investors who were frightened by the crypto crash and “the negative sentiment associated with web3- integrated game.” But to my thinking, it raises questions about the timing of the announcement: We wrote about the cryptocurrency market “experiencing an unprecedented crash” in May (opens in a new tab)but Phat Loot launched the pre-order campaign (opens in a new tab) August 1st, just ten days before the whole thing was put on hold, and it gives 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 that it can be completed and released down the track alongside other possible titles.” However, there is no sign of when that might happen: The studio said in its latest livestream that conventional publishers are being intimidated 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 get Untamed Isles to launch – the problem is what happens after that. “We can’t get traction or follow through marketing and there is no revenue in crypto right now,” the team said. “How much money can you raise before you start the game and it ends up burning a hole in our team and we lose?”
I have reached out to Phat Loot for more information on the Untamed Isles state and will update if I hear back.
