Untamed Isles is a cautionary tale of game development funded by crypto investors

Untamed Isles, a Pokémon-like MMORPG with “optional” play-to-earn elements, has been put on indefinite hiatus.

The game was set for an early access release date of October 6th, which will no longer happen.

“A lot has happened in the last 72 hours. This has been a wild rush,” is how Joshua Grant, CEO of Phat Loot Studios, opened his Twitch stream on August 12. The stream was held to address the statement that had just been published by Phat Loot, announcing Untamed Isles’ hiatus, and to field questions from the community.

Development on Untamed Isles started over two years ago at the New Zealand-based indie company Phat Loot Studios. At the time, Grant called the game and his studio “his dream,” the latter of which grew enormously to work on Untamed Isles. More than 70 people were brought in, all of whom will be released in less than two weeks.

The project raised $841k NZD (around £420k) through Kickstarter, more than four times its original goal of $200k NZD. Despite raising nearly $1 million from backers, this barely scratches the surface of the costs and investments that Untamed Isles has sunk into development.

One of the problems that has led to the current state of Untamed Isles is its ever-increasing scale and cost, said Grant, who claimed the weekly salary for the team was around $100k NZD (£50k) a week. The money raised through the Kickstarter covered about two months’ wages for the team working on Untamed Isles. Grant admitted that the amount of funding needed was “massively underestimated”.

Looking at the game’s Steam and Kickstarter pages, it’s hard to believe that the first title from a small indie developer was going to be a massive open-world MMORPG with “1.5m possible combinations” of animals to tame, PvP, breeding mechanics, dungeons and raids, a dynamic weather system and new islands constantly appearing, and a physical book series. As the Kickstarter reached more and more of its stretch goals, more and more features that were promised had to be added, which equaled more time and more money to pay staff.

Development on Untamed Islands could not have been funded solely through Kickstarter. Grant stated that he, along with Phat Loot’s shareholders and board of directors, had personally financed the company to keep it afloat, none of them taking a salary.

Otherwise, the game’s funding has come from crypto investors, which is now the biggest block to the game’s release. Untamed Isles is inherently intertwined with cryptocurrency and blockchain, which attracted many crypto investors to the project. However, with the recent crypto crash, new crypto investors expecting to add more funds pulled out. Currently, the company has no funds to keep the lights on, which is why development on Untamed Isles is being put on hold until crypto investors have more confidence in the market.

Grant reiterated through his stream that development on Untamed Isles would resume and the game would launch at the “right time,” when the crypto market was in a better place. Exactly when this will be, no one knows.

At first glance, it is not clear that the game has any relation to blockchain technology. The first mention of the play-to-earn elements on Kickstarter is about 3/5 of the campaign description. It’s easy to miss or skip because there’s so much to scroll through before you get to it, and it’s also not visible if you go to the very bottom of the page.

On the Steam listing, there is no mention of play-to-earn or blockchain whatsoever, hiding the fact that the game looks like it would have violated Valve’s strict ban on blockchain. Under rule 13 about what content is not allowed to be published on Steam, the following is stated: “Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow the exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs”.

Untamed Isles’ Kickstarter claims the project is a “game first, crypto second” and says the blockchain aspects are not necessary to play the game. Despite this, it is undeniable that play-to-earn is meant to be a core part of the game, as Grant stated in his livestream that his vision was a “live working marketplace that allowed players to trade and enjoy their assets between each other, to enable them to earn money while playing or buy things they want with real currency”. (The assets in question here are tokenized versions of the players’ creatures.)

And Grant also seems passionate about using blockchain. “I don’t regret getting into the crypto side of this,” he added in his stream, “because the opportunity was there”. Grant stated that he believed that integrating crypto into Untamed Isles would add value to the game’s community, and value to games as a whole.

Many in the game’s community say they feel cheated and lied to. While they thought they were pledging their money to a PC Pokémon tribute or a rival to TemTem, they said they weren’t aware the game would include play-to-earn, or that crypto investment was a major source of funding for Untamed Isles.

Phat Loot released another statement earlier today reiterating that they did not invest any funds received for the game’s development into crypto, and that “all funds raised through crowdfunding and through traditional investment” were used for development costs. According to Untamed Isles staff on the game’s official Discord server, “most” funds used to build the game were acquired through traditional investment.

Regardless, fans claim that Phat Loot is still investing in blockchain technology as a sector by developing a game based on the idea of ​​trading and selling tokenized versions of pretty monsters.

When asked by a viewer about removing the game’s blockchain elements, Grant said he was unwilling to do so as it would be unfair to crypto investors who had already funded the project. Since Untamed Isles’ inception, crypto trading was always meant to be a mechanic, Grant continued, and removing the blockchain entirely would mean the end of the project. “I want to sit here and tell you it’s over,” he concluded.

Grant also took issue with the impression people had of the game’s use of blockchain, citing the negative press it has received in the mainstream press as one of the reasons why the play-to-earn portion of the game received backlash from the community.

No acknowledgment from Grant of how Phat Loot was unclear about blockchain intentions.

Regardless, some parts of the project’s community simply don’t want to engage in a game involving blockchain, whether it’s due to realizing general concerns over the long-term viability of cryptocurrencies – or disagreeing with their environmental impact.

Stix, a YouTuber who runs the MMOByte channel, had this exact problem with the game. Recommended to him by some of his viewers, Stix posted a video praising the game on July 20. The next day, he posted an update to apologize for inadvertently covering a game that had play-to-earn crypto elements, which he said he strongly opposed. Stix also emphasized that he felt Phat Loot had been disingenuous about the inclusion of blockchain technology in Untamed Isles, and that if he had realized that, he would never have covered the game in the first place.

In his Twitch stream, Grant blamed MMOByte’s apology video as the starting point for the project’s loss of public support. After this, Grant “pretty much outed all the other major mainstream gaming press companies [pulled] out to cover us”.

Untamed Islands also lost any traction it had gained with influencers. Phat Loot had hired Wolfe Glick, better known as Wolfey, a former Pokémon World Champion, to “help oversee and design” the game’s battle system. Through Wolfey’s network, the company had managed to get affiliates and influencers on board, only for them to pull out. Grant blamed this exodus on a tweet from Wolfey. It is believed he was referring to the tweet below, where Wolfey claimed that the game was originally supposed to have NFTs, but plans for it were shelved.

With a lack of press coverage and solid sales numbers, Phat Loot says now is not the time to release the game, and doing so would only risk incurring even greater costs for server hosting and a support team, with no guarantee of revenue. .

Grant claimed the game had 50 pre-sales, while the company had hoped for between two and three thousand. With the release of Early Access, all pre-sales and Phat Loot Tokens (the company’s own blockchain token economy) will be refunded.

However, backers on Kickstarter will not receive refunds. Grant said the company can’t currently afford to refund backers because they just don’t have the money. Backers are furious, having paid for the development of a game that is now in indefinite limbo. Backers were originally promised a December 2021 release date, and Grant admitted that complaints about the continuous delays were fair. Now backers are unsure if they will ever receive the game they paid for, 10 of them paid as much as $12k NZD.

Many supporters believe Phat Loot’s statement is tone deaf. Some say they appreciate Grant’s openness about the situation, but most are angry to find that their money has been used to create a system they disagree with without their knowledge, and that a game that was promised them half a year ago is no longer on the cards.

Phat Loot says it will now wait for the crypto market to stabilize so investors can return, adding the funds the developer says they still need to see the game through.

Speaking at the end of his livestream, Grant remained strongly opposed to refunding backers and releasing the game as is. Finally, he vowed to do everything in his power to ensure that the game is eventually released. “Have faith in me, have faith in the project,” he asked.