Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 25-08-2022
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Another company, Pixie Interactive, just went under due to absolute morons in charge, who thought cryptocurrency is the way ahead. What can I say besides Pixie Interactive kicked the bucket, Pixie Interactive shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. This is an ex-company!
Pixie Interactive, a company that was suppose to work on game called Northern Guilds, which is of course MMORPG (what else?) with promotional slogan "Bringing fun back to play-to-earn". Umm... Ok. But when exactly play-to-earn was fun? Well, anyway.
Two people in charge of Pixie Interactive, which was established in October 2021, are devoted fans of blockchain, so of course not only they were keen to introduce NFTs into Northern Guilds, but also... tried to raise money by putting what they had in cryptocurrency called Luna. Luna, if you weren’t paying attention, lost about 90% of its value since start of 2022, so has Pixie Interactive. Oh, but there is one more layer to that story...
I misguided you a bit, dear reader, by using the phrase "putting what they had in cryptocurrency", because... they put the money they did not have in Luna. Actually they technically had, but it was about 800.000 Euro they were suppose to pay taxes with in June 2022. So now, surprise, surprise, not only they sank their company, not only they brought misery to their employees, but also Dutch government is after them for unpaid taxes.
The founders of the company also were trying to establish another project called NFTVaults, which also did not saved them. And after Luna collapsed and Pixie Interactive was on a verge of being bankrupt, the CEO of that company simply vanished. Of course he has, crypto-bros are all about responsibility, aren’t they? The CTO pretty much abandoned the company, now facing possible tax-related charges. So... it’s good news all around in blockchain and NFT worlds :)
And the game itself? Well, according to former employees Northern Guilds had no real plan, it was rather a package of loose ideas, which when put together in GDD (game design document, a bible for such project) turned out to be "ultimately incomplete and weak at best, especially for the type of game we were developing". What a pity the CEO and CTO did not have time to put together some kind of plan before they hired people or spent money on crypto... Oh, well, crypto-bros got to do what crypto-bros got to do.
Of course it is not a laughing matter for their employees, or rather former employees, but on the other hand when you join a newly formed company with sole goal of building MMORPG with elements of blockchain, do you really think there is a perspective of long employment in front of you?
25-08-2022
Untamed Isles, an open world MMO game, which was funded by users of Kickstarter, just went into hiatus after 2 years of development. The project got 4 times the money the developers asked for, so... of course it is another huge fail.
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