NFT's are Fundamentally a MLM-Type Scam Designed to Get You to Buy Crypto

Shipwreck_Jones · January 30, 2022, 9:35am

Well, I seriously doubt Eve would remain a game I love to play after P2E got jammed into it. I dunno. I suppose it could be tacked on the side, and easily ignored, just like the hypernet relay is. But, I somehow doubt that. Moreover, going P2E will likely bring a demographic shift, that will reverberate through a sandbox game with player driven game play.

And then there’s the potential moral considerations. I’m not morally opposed to gambling, but I am against real life scamming and exploitation. So, depending on the implementation, it wouldn’t matter how much I could make, or how much fun I could have.

Dark_Magni · January 30, 2022, 1:25pm

dude, it’s just a digital asset.

Arumi_Liz · January 30, 2022, 1:59pm

It’s why it’s not a big deal to traders. It’s clear who CCP bends the knee to. I hope you’re happy about it.

Anderson_Geten · January 30, 2022, 3:21pm

And it’s STILL illegal.
They don’t OWN the assets, therefore they are selling an access right to something they don’t own.
Subletting is illegal without the landlord’s explicit consent.

Being a big deal or not is unrelated.
You are making apology for illegal activities.

No it’s not. The law is in place to make the society benefit above the individual benefit. It does not prevent misfortune.

If you make an illegal trade and get caught, that’s a misfortune that the law totally accepts - and actually creates.

Again, your claims are nothing but a sh¡tshow.

Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras · January 30, 2022, 10:56pm

@Arumi_Liz I gotta go with Anderson on the point of selling in game items. Nothing in EVE belongs to us, so to sell something you basically stole is illegal.

If i lease a truck then attempt to sell it, that’s illegal

Aedaxus · January 30, 2022, 11:59pm

December 8, 2021 in Iceland ;

December 15, 2021

Get a load of this Hilmar guy…

ISD_Dorrim_Barstorlode · January 31, 2022, 3:01am

Removed a bunch of posts that violate the following rules, relevant parts highlighted. Keep the rules in mind when posting, thanks.

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Shipwreck_Jones · January 31, 2022, 4:47am

Okay, I did a little looking, and I could find anything about RMT being illegal in any nation. So, afaik, you’re right on that point. Now, that does not rule out civil liability, as some bot makers have found. However, I don’t think that’s relevant to the current discussion. That being said, I still take issue with some of your claims.

As for CCP making more money, and the game population growing, well… that may very well happen. I’m sure that many existing players will immediate leave, but they could be offset by an influx of new, pro-P2E players. I guess that depends on how many existing players would welcome/be tolerant of P2E, and how many P2E players there are out there.

However, even if the change results in immediate success, I seriously, seriously doubt that it will be sustained. Take a look at Axie Infinity for example. It was designed from the ground up to be P2E, and has be held up as an example of successful P2E. Yet, in spite of this, its economy is still tanking hard because of the fundamental problem with P2E games. Namely, that P2E players are driven by profit, not fun. This means that they spend only what they have to in order to make money; which, in turn, means that the in-game economy requires a constant influx of new players in order to keep the economy propped up (and that the game is essentially transformed into a MLM, greater fool type scam, whether that was dev intent or not).

And this is something that even something that the pro-P2E publication Deconstructor of Fun mostly agrees with, The main difference in our opinions stems from the fact that I believe that this is a fundamental issue with P2E, while they believe that the issue is limited to P2E games that focus too much on the economic side of things, and not enough on making a fun game to play.

Personally, however, I don’t think it matters how much fun you make games that follow the Axie Infinity model of P2E, because the P2E players will essentially be undermining your efforts every step of the way. As civilization designer Soren Johnson once noted, given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. And he was specifically referring to P4F players. Naturally, I have absolutely zero doubt that P2E players will crank this up to 11. Any game where there is sufficient money to be made will be flooded with bots and P2E players. They will:

hover up resources
box P4F players out of limited availability content (i.e. incursions and live event sites)
wreak havoc on the in-game economy and P4F players’ ability to earn (i.e. inflation, deflating the value of loot, sending plex prices to the friggin moon)
refuse to engage with various systems in ways that other players consider fair or fun (i.e. grinding the crap out of FW content, while refusing to engage with the PvE side of things)
won’t follow behavioral norms designed to encourage fun (i.e. Wormholer’s Bushido code or honoring the 1v1)
create a rift within the game’s community

And yes, I realize that P4F players do a lot of this stuff as well. But I promise you that things will be much, much worse. All the things that already cheese players off will be increased by entire orders of magnitude. P4F players can enjoy challenging games, but they do not like playing games that they perceive as being inherently unfair.

It’s going to be a catch-22. Even if you succeed at attracting and retaining a bunch P4F players, that’s just going to result in P2E players ruining the game for the P4F players. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that P2E devs will help extend the lives of their games through things like:

making their games more fun
deceptive marketing (to increase P4F player acquisition)
going F2P (to reduce the barrier to entry), and
by learning how to mitigate the damage that P2E players do to the economy, and to P4F player fun.

But at the end of they day, the goals, priorities, and activities of P2E players are fundamentally at odds with those of P4F players. It’s only a matter of time before the P4F players leave, the P2E players stop buying, and the economy collapses. Which essentially reduces Axie Inifinity type games into a greater fool scam. The only real question is who makes a bunch of money, and who gets stuck holding the bag.

Steve_Ronuken · January 31, 2022, 10:44am

P2E = If you’re not going to spend money on assets, you’re going to spend a bunch of time grinding them out.

That’s pretty much the only way it works.

You can see bits of it with PLEX already.

Players won’t be ‘earning’ from CCP. So they’ll be ‘Earning’ from other players. So if you’re going to make any real money from it, someone else is going to have to be paying (on aggregate) a bunch more money.

the best gear will only be available for real money.

Anderson_Geten · January 31, 2022, 11:19am

Any trade that does not declare its benefits to the taxman is illegal.

If your trade is taking services or goods produced by a UK company, and selling them to customers in UK, then you are effectively avoiding taxes to the UK government.
If you are a customer out of UK, then the company (CCP) can be considered doing tax evasion by selling to foreign countries without tax : if CCP benefits in any way from the existence of such a transaction, then it can be considered culprit of tax evasion.

Children are scared of the big monster, that comes in the dark , the darkman
Adults are only scared of the only monster that will screw you in the day : the taxman. Remember he’s the one who got Capone.

This.

Whenever there is a great profit in gamble, means there is a greater loss.

Githany_Red · February 1, 2022, 7:17am

I have been trying to understand NFT’s so thxs I’ll watch it .
I did come across something called Star atlas, and that looked worrying , the guy was buying a ship that had a nft so was an asset out side the game all ready to play when game was ready.

People seem to be throwing money at it and there’s no game ready yet it seems .

Maybe ccp are thinking well we have a game let’s add the crypto side to it and they will have a flying start.

Anderson_Geten · February 1, 2022, 8:03am

It’s the opposite, the NFT is an owner ship inside a virtual world, but ONLY of a receipt.
When there is a transaction on the block chain, it is a receipt that you acquired the receipt. It does not say what is inside, ONLY that you are now associated with the receipt number 5 in the virtual world of John Mc Byrne. What right does it grant you ? It’s not specified. At the moment of the purchase it can be associated with a plane, and after the purchase, to a cow, and YET you don’t own either. There is NO relation between what it shows and what you own.

That’s the big myth : the link between the NFT and the item shown is NOT a contract.
You know, like I can sell you an NFT of 2B for 1B. I mean, it’s the type of scam you have all the time on Eve - well NFT are exactly the same.

Karak_Terrel · February 1, 2022, 9:42am

It seems that way at a first glance, but there is actually a big difference between a crypto asset or smart contract that lives on the blockchain, and an asset that simply references something outside that system.

For a coin or token, it’s pretty clear that the valuable item is the coin or token itself, IT IS the digital asset and it completely lives on the decentralized network, with all the ownership, use cases and other benefits that brings.

This is completely different for a game assets. They are always tied to a game, which is a centralized service controlled by a single company who make the rules what is allowed and what isn’t. The actual real game asset always lives on a centralized game server. It does not matter if there is an NFT somewhere that references that asset and somehow appears to be the ownership rights to the game asset.

The game company is always in complete control. If they don’t want you to have the game asset, they can just completely ignore the NFT. If they don’t like who you traded it with, they can block it. If they ban your account or access to the game, they can simply delete the asset and the NFT points to the void.

The only “use” they have is as collectibles independant of the game.

So there is NO benefit for the gamer.

Shipwreck_Jones · February 1, 2022, 10:27am

Yeah, my recent youtube history has been getting me a lot of ads for crypto exchanges and NFT games. One of which was for a game called Mech Terra (I guess, I’m not even exactly sure what the name is). It hasn’t even released, but they’re already selling NFT’s for it.

Now, I’m sure that many people would say that this is no worse than kickstarting, or perhaps that it’s even better because you get an NFT out of the deal. But I call shenanigans.

So, kickstarting resulted in a ton of vaporware and crap games (either because of incompetence or fraud), which meant a lot of backers got screwed. It also meant that gamers became a lot more hesitant to throw money at projects. And now, I think NFT’s are changing that… well, not the players getting screwed part, but the part about players being hesitant to keep throwing money at every asshole with a game idea.

Now, I have absolutely no idea whether Mech Terra will actually ever release a game, or whether or not it will actually be good. But I have absolute zero doubt that the integration of NFT’s into gaming is going to result in a new crop of gamers getting ■■■■■■ by backing bad projects (either because the devs are incompetent, or because they’re outright con artists).

What I can say about Mech Terra, however, is that it seems rather shady.

Their white paper makes it sound like the game is being made by a different company than is actually making it. Now, I cannot say with certainty what is going on here (because I don’t want to be sued), but some (not me) might argue that they are intentionally trying to mislead customers/investors/marks by making it appear that the game is being developed by a studio that actually has completed projects under its belt.
They are trying to induce FOMO by limiting the NFT’s being minted, as well as increasing their cost each round of minting.
Not only is there no early access, but there is no game play footage at all (only footage of mechs walking).
They say nothing about any sort of refunds if they fail to deliver.
Not using a platform like kickstarter means that their project isn’t even being reviewed by 3rd party “trust and safety” teams.
Not using a platform like kickstarter means that you can’t get your money back if they fail to meet their funding goals.
Their roadmap is a ■■■■■■■ joke. First, the PDF that they call their roadmap consists of a title and closing page, 15 pages of them trying to sell players on the game, and only 4 pages of actually roadmap. Second, it’s a wee bit a little light on details. Third, it’s a friggin PDF. Now, I don’t know if any of you guys have ever kept tabs on the roadmaps of games, but I’ve observed that the roadmaps of successful projects (1) tend to go into a lot more detail, and (2) are in a format that can be updated, in order to reflect delays and shifting priorities. I dunno, but I literally have more faith and confidence in the Star Citizen roadmap than I do for Mech Terra’s roadmap.

But hey man, who knows how much those NFT’s will be worth in the future. So, you should probably buy two before the price goes up.

Meh, I fully expect a new round of youtube commentary on how gamers are getting screwed by backing unreleased games. The only difference is that before, this was facilitated through kickstarter, and today, it’s facilitated by NFT’s.

Here, have a bonus video about a kickstarter scam.

Algathas · February 1, 2022, 10:34am

I like how they are selling mechs and land before even prototyping the game in their timeline. Man I’m in the wrong business.

Anderson_Geten · February 1, 2022, 10:53am

PDF are created from a source. Update the source, export as pdf.

PDf is the readable format while the source is the writable one(latex, markdown, or plain spreadsheet). It’s pretty standard for even bigger project to have the project advancement presented in pdf.

Pick your favorite markdown to PDF ^^ .

Shipwreck_Jones · February 1, 2022, 11:22am

True. But, let me put it this way, if your goal was to keep your supporters informed of your actual progress, would you create and upload PDF’s all the time, or would you use something like Trello, set it so that the public can view it, and then provide a link.

So, yeah, you can make it work with PDF’s. But I’m speculating that they used something ill-suited for keeping the community up to date on their progress because they probably have no intention of keeping the community up to date on their progress.

Karak_Terrel · February 1, 2022, 12:04pm

The whole “whitepaper” thing is an attempt to imitated Satoshi’s whitepaper (something everyone should read honestly) and make it look like it’s a novel idea. It’s not only crypto games that are basically a PDF and a token sale, that is most of the projects in the space. It’s completely literate with garbage.

But one could say that instead of the gamers who are mostly opposed to NFT’s, they try to get the money of “investors” who aren’t even interested in the games, but think because the stuff is somehow remotely attached to a use case that ensures it will appreciate in value. It’s all speculation on projects that will be completely gone within a year or two without having delivered anything.

You only have to look at the top projects in the crypto space that where “the new thing” in every bull run which where caused by Bitcoin’s halving cycles. Even the top 10 coins are completely different, except for Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum which has actually some novel ideas as well. Every four years the space is flooded with new garbage projects that get picked up by ignorant people who want to make a quick buck. And every time they get completely obliterated when the hype is over and all the money leaves the market.

So all we have to do is wait a couple months. Either we already are in the bear market or we will see another short crazy phase followed by one. But after that all this NFT and crypto gaming garbage will be gone again and to be replaced with new garbage over the next two years, but hopefully unrelated to gaming.