Fake Coromon NFTs are another blockchain scam

If you have seen any Coromon NFTs that have been announced on social media over the past few days, you might think that publisher Freedom Games has joined the NFT bandwagon. However, this is not the case; it’s all part of yet another cryptocurrency scam, and Freedom isn’t happy about it.

What happens to these fakes Coromon NFTs?

Developers and publishers can find ways around Steam’s strict no-crypto rule, however Coromon publisher Freedom Games is not one of them. Yesterday, on social media, cryptocurrency scammers posed as one Coromon account offered people the chance to participate in NFT giveaways and talked up blockchain games, leading some to wonder if Coromon had jumped the NFT shark. However, this is not the case; Freedom Games has paid for these suggestions, called them “obviously false” and repeated it Coromon has “absolutely no NFT or blockchain integration” in a press release.

The scammers tweeted under the name Coromon (BSC), using the very plausible Twitter handle of @CoromonGame. The real one Coromon The Twitter account is @CoromonTheGame, so you can see where the confusion may have arisen. In @CoromonGames’ tweet, the scammers list “game economy optimization” and “token economy distribution” as upcoming steps for the game, while in reality Freedom and developer Tragsoft have no intention of implementing blockchain technology in Coromon. Unlike the folks at Mojang, Freedom stops short of completely condemning NFTs and blockchain technology, but it’s clear that Coromon, is not interested in blockchain implementation anyway. If you see tweets from @CoromonGame or anything involving NFT integration in Coromonbe aware that it is a scam.

Allegedly, the fraudsters in this case use “the face of [blockchain security provider] CertiK“, as Freedom puts it, although the publisher says it does not know whether the scammers actually have a relationship with CertiK or not. This is not even the first time this situation has happened with Freedom; back in January of this year, the publisher had to warn players that a similar scam was being perpetrated around voxel-based crafting games Outer reverse. Plus a change, right?

NFTs and cryptocurrency are not a pain at all, except when they are

Scams like this really don’t help cryptocurrency and NFTs, to say the least. It seems that Web3-oriented crypto bros just can’t help themselves. I’m reminded of the W3itch.io debacle last month, where a Web3 grift site stole code from Itch.io and used it to set up a copycat site full of all the cryptocurrency and NFT stuff that Itch.io has rejected very publicly. It is also the group that illegally creates Magic the Gathering NFTs, a situation that Wizards of the Coast quickly put an end to in February.

In general, NFTs are not well loved in the gaming community. While industrial fixtures like Dead or alive‘s Tomonobu Itagaki and studios like Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds Developer Netmarble is embracing Web3, it’s not being received quite as warmly elsewhere, with companies like Team17 and Plug In Digital pulling out of NFT and Web3 partnerships after intense derision and backlash from their respective communities. Common criticisms leveled at NFTs and cryptocurrency include a perceived lack of value for players, as well as a lack of desire to “play to earn” and the massively damaging environmental impact Web3 technology has. Hopefully, the crypto scammers who stole Coromonthe face will see the light and redeem itself soon, but given that crypto bros still seem to dot the gaming landscape like particularly troublesome pimples, that’s not likely.