The play-to-earn (P2E) game Pixelmon is stirring up controversy and mockery. The project that sold $70 million in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is far from delivering on all its promises.
Pixelmon sparks controversy
Pixelmon is a play-to-earn (P2E) gaming project that completed its first pre-sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on February 7 for a record amount. The sale took place in a dutch auction with a starting price of 3 Ethers (ETH) per NFT.
Pixelmon managed to sell 7,750 NFTs for a total of approximately 22,475 ETH or the equivalent of $70 million. The sale lasted less than 30 minutes. Currently, the value of NFTs has almost been divided by ten on OpenSea.
In the last few days, Pixelmon has been stirring up Twitter as many people have called the project a scam, suggesting that the artwork was a fraud. We can see some examples of the visuals below :
In addition, the NFTEthics collective and others are exploring the project in detail to find out the truth and how this could have happened.
Back to the facts
What exactly are the community’s complaints? Beyond the quality of the visuals, several designs were purchased from the Unity Asset Store. Other issues were raised on Twitter and Discord, for example, the Pixelmon team allegedly used 400 ETH of the development funds to buy some NFTs such as Bored Ape Yatch Club (BAYC), CloneX and Azuki.
The 21-year-old founder recently revealed his identity to quell suspicions that the project was a scam. He stated:
“No matter how long it takes or how much FUD there is on the project, we are determined to make our long-term vision and everything that was outlined in our Litepaper a reality.”
The founder promised that the team will go all out to solve any existing problems. He also pledged $2 million immediately to “revamp and redesign NFTs to a higher quality.”
This means that holders will still have to wait before a new, reputable art studio is hired and new artwork is created.
However, Pixelmon might finally have the means to implement its vision as the team now has $70 million in its hands which is the budget of games like The Witcher 3 ($81M), Metal Gear Solid V ($80M) or even Call off Duty Black Ops ($50M).
