Pixelmon raised over $70M on its initial NFT sale a few weeks ago in a bid to become the Pokemon of the Metaverse. The project has come under a lot of scrutiny since the reveal with many unsettling developments. To point out, there were red flags since the beginning, but here you had peak NFT euphoria, FOMO, and lack of judgment for many investors where greed overtook logic and they minted out at a 3E price.
The project has become a laughing stock and everything wrong with the NFT space at the moment. There were red flags from inception from the unusually high social media following (no key NFT players were present), inconsistent teasers/art and extremely high mint price (dutch auction started at 3E while most projects have minted well below 0.5E). But things really started down the slippery slope after the raise. To start, the anon team is led by a 21 year old New Zealander and a team of misfits that lack the credentials to build a game. It was discovered that the team used the proceeds to buy NFTs from other top tier projects. The teasers and art prior to sale and the reveal, are nothing alike, to say the least. Not to forget, that they paid an artist on Fiverr $500 for the work.
What was promised?
What was delivered? KEVIN!
To make things worse, the team realizes they may have rushed the reveal and blamed OpenSea infrastructure for the poor renderings and committed to spending $2M to bring on a professional studio to re-do the reveal art.
Now my pure opinions, I don’t blame the team as much as I blame the people that bought. People blindly decided to spend 3E ($9K) per mint on a project without really doing much homework. Additionally, this WL/mint vibe has blown way out of proportion, and it’s sad to see decisions driven purely by FOMO and greed. On the other hand, if Syber (founder of Pixelmon) is smart, he’d refund the money and move on. The lawsuits won’t be pretty and this kid is way over his head. For one, Call of Duty costs $50M to produce annually, why does this unreputable firm need $70M to make a game that looks like Minecraft with a Pokemon skin. Furthermore, they plan on hiring professional studios to build the game, in which case, is Pixelmon just a middleman ripping a fee while they will be paying others to actually make the game? IDK but thanks for the Kevin meme and the absurdity of this whole thing. Be safe out there and think rationally.
