Axie Infinity It has been one of the biggest fevers in the crypto market in recent months, having even been a great promise to revolutionize the market, a promise that has come to be copied by many. But with the price of the gaming asset falling and different problems in the ecosystem, a Bloomberg column points out that what ended up happening was simply a disaster for investors.
“Axie Infinity’s vision of ‘Play2Earn’ has collapsed, and the company behind the game is now telling gamers that the goal was never to make money,” says Bloomberg’s column on Axie Infinity.
Axie Infinity was not a complex game in fact, it was nothing more than a simplistic version of Pokémon, however, the possibility of earning money playing caught the attention of many, with players claiming to be living only with the game, but in the long term, what was the result? ?
“Many Axie players admit it wasn’t a lot of fun, but that hasn’t stopped people from spending hours researching strategies, spending time on gaming-related Discord channels, Reddit forums, and even paying for specialized software to help them create builds.”added the column.
Bloomberg highlighted the story of Alejo Lopez de Armentiaa Florida resident who has invested around $40,000 in the game since August of last year. Despite enjoying the game, Armentia makes it clear that the goal was never fun.
“I was hoping this would become my full-time job.” Armentia said.
The way to make money with Axie was through the AXS cryptocurrencies and especially with the SLP (Small Love Potion) which could be earned by completing quests and winning tournaments in Axie Infinity. These coins have real-world value because, in addition to in-game use, they could be sold on different markets, in addition to Axies, which were themselves NFTs that could be sold, SLPs were fungible and had “real-world value.” ”. Armentia invested in the “creation of Axies”, which was the creation of new NFTs by merging others. According to him, around August last year, when Axie was in full force, she was able to get her money back with a profit margin of “300% in five days”.
Axie Infinity Disaster
“The greatest weapon that has ever existed against poverty”
Axie Infinity was created by the startup Sky Mavis Inc. who always preached that gambling was a new way to revolutionize the entire financial system. The company puts in its mission that it wants to empower gamers around the world.
“We believe in empowering our players and giving them economic opportunity. Welcome to our revolution,” says Sky Mavis of Axie Infinity.
At its peak, Sky Mavis was valued at $3 billion. In the same month that it hit that mark, the game had 2 million daily users.
Alexis Ohanian co-founder of Reddit and a big investor in Axie Infinity even predicted that the game would show the future of the economy thanks to the strength of web3 and that 90% of the games would be played to win, like Axie. Even the American presidential candidate Andrew Yang said that web3 was an “extraordinary opportunity to improve the human condition” and “the best weapon against poverty that we have”.
The Fall of Axie Infinity
When Yang spoke about the wonders of web3, the economy of Axie Infinity was in deep crisis. The game had lost around 40% of its daily users, and the SLP, which was trading at $0.40was at $0.18, while AXS, once trading at $165went down to $56.
Shortly after the Axie price collapse, the situation got considerably worse when the network was attacked by a hacker.
As Sky Mavis’s revolutionary rhetoric began to sound increasingly hollow, the company changed its history and even its marketing behind the scenes. In December of last year, it quietly amended its mission statement, removing the phrase «Play2Earn» and replacing it with the much vaguer and softer “Play&Earn”. Instead of trying to recover Axie Infinity as it was and recover the value of the currency, they simply decided to remove the cryptocurrency factor from the game, although that was the main trick. With the release of Axie: Origins, which was a long-awaited update for gamers, the interaction with cryptocurrencies was removed, and Sky Mavis said that more gamers would be willing to jump into a game that has no complications with cryptocurrencies. The plan is for the Origin version to replace the original game, with the non-cryptocurrency version attracting more players. This, of course, ends up creating a certain malaise for many who invested in Axie Infinity, especially in its heyday. With the company trying to distance the game from cryptocurrencies, it is very possible that those who are lost will continue. Armentia was contacted by Bloomberg in the midst of this massive collapse of Axie Infinity, but he is no longer an investor and uses the profits he made to round up some friends and buy a company that sells inflatable toys for children’s parties.