Culture

NFT Game ‘Pixelmon’ Raised $70M Only To Deliver Hilariously Bad Art

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resurfaced Albrecht Dürer sketch bought for $30 worth $50 million

iStockphoto / Andrei Barmashov

  • NFT project Pixelmon raised $70M after coming up with an open-world RPG game concept
  • Players would be able to capture, trade, and sell the NFT characters in a game
  • After Pixelmon revealed the game’s artwork, many are trolling and pointing out the project is a scam

When Pixelmon announced they were going to create an open-world role-playing game using NFTs, people were instantly excited to hear more.

The individuals behind the project explained the RPG would be set in the world of “Eden,” where players could capture, trade, and sell the NFT Pixelmon characters.

This was the demo reel that really got people hyped up.

Skepticism on Pixelmon Raising $70 Million on Initial Mint

Pixelmon generated so much buzz they were able to raise $70 million dollars to fund the project. The founders set the mint to a Dutch-style auction with a whopping start price of 3 ETH (or around $8800 in today).

After every 10 minutes, the price to buy an NFT character would then drop by 0.1 until the lot of 10,000 NFTs sold out.

Several NFT influencers on Twitter took to express how buyers should take caution before buying into a project priced so high. Many people pointed out it could be a potential rug pull.

What caused even more skepticism is when Pixelmon’s main founder, Syber, confidently tweeted “Pixelmon is the next blue chip. Don’t do your own research.”

https://twitter.com/Syberer/status/1473839328698662913?s=20&t=hc-Qb1SCivMOSaECEUyGFg

It’s worth noting $70 million similar to that of a major video game budget for a company like Xbox or Playstation.

Pixelmon Flopping on Art Reveal

Over the past weekend, Pixelmon revealed the artwork of what the NFT characters would look like. Fans and investors were instantly confused after seeing the characters appeared nothing like what was advertised.

Here are some of the initial tweets showing what the characters would look like at first.

https://twitter.com/Syberer/status/1472696726309904384?s=20&t=X7QizTJAV13vTR24Xr8I0w

In reality, the artwork was so horrible people started trolling the heck out of the project.

https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1497370489123082244?s=20&t=IaXWpK20Nb_qR_O7MHZOwQ

https://twitter.com/0xHustler/status/1497444332604833797?s=20&t=BLMSwF7ISbQEiNFeqBTaSg

One Pixelmon character was hilariously bad. Its name is Kevin.

Where the Project Goes from Here

Many people in the NFT space are calling Pixelmon a scam however, Syber expressed remorse via Twitter and said the team would fix the problem.

https://twitter.com/Syberer/status/1497402570478075907?s=20&t=fRjSzYVMub_kw6GunwRoUQ

This doesn’t negate the fact Pixelmon was allegedly hiring people on freelancing sites like Upwork and ripping off stock models anyone can go buy.

https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1497633922666184707?s=20&t=fRjSzYVMub_kw6GunwRoUQ

https://twitter.com/eddyiskongz/status/1497637453154246656?s=20&t=zR8ApqtblS1YQrxY2baXAA

And just to be clear, this isn’t necessarily a knock to artists on Upwork, but if you’re a project that’s raised $70 million dollars you would anticipate the founders to hire a professional design studio to get the artwork right.

Remember, this is the same type of budget major video game titles get.

Now, Syber is also expressing they’ve hired a studio with “500 employees.”

Only time will tell if Pixelmon fixes the problem they’ve caused. If they can get it right, they’ll deliver on a major first for how NFTs can be used in gaming.

But for now, they’re this week’s laughing stocks of the NFT world.