The building game Blockverse was supposed to be a kind of Minecraft with play-to-earn mechanics and focus on NFTs. In this way, over 1.1 million euros were generated at launch. But shortly thereafter, the game and all contact options to the developers disappeared. Then they reappeared and tried to explain everything. How everything has developed, you can find out here on MeinMMO
What is Blockverse? Blockverse is a sort of unofficial mod of the popular block game Minecraft. However, here you should be able to obtain your items acquired in the game as NFTs. NFTs are digital “items” based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. They can be bought and sold online, which seems very tempting for some players. Thus, a kind of Minecraft could be run as a “play-to-earn” game, allowing players to earn real money through virtual work.
What happened after the first sale? At the start of the project, the developers mined 10,000 NFTs based on the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which were worth over 1.1 million euros at the current exchange rate (as of January 29, 2022). In addition, there were revenues from secondary transactions, from which the developers also earned shares.
However, as soon as the sale was finished and all tokens sold, the developers suddenly disappeared. The game’s website was dead, the Discord was completely deleted, and there was silence on Twitter as well.
Quickly, the suspicion of a so-called “rug pull” was voiced. In the crypto scene, this refers to a type of fraud where providers simply disappear with the collected cryptocurrency as soon as enough gullible victims have paid for it.
Developers reappear and apologize – fans remain skeptical
What happened next? After three days, during which the angry players of Blockverse had gathered in a new Discord, the developers suddenly reappeared and published a statement via Twitlonger.
According to them, they completely underestimated what additional costs (so-called “gas fees“) and technical problems were associated with such a project. This, in turn, led to an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which resulted in toxic behavior from the community. In this atmosphere, the team reportedly panicked and deleted everything:
18 hours after the launch, the [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] quickly turned into harassment, threats, and doxxing. The team noticed all of this and panicked, then quickly deleted the Discord server. Everything else was closed to prevent the ongoing harassment that had occurred by then. Even then, the plan was to reopen the server as soon as everyone had calmed down.
There is absolutely no reason for us to permanently abandon the project as all the technical work and infrastructure for the project has already been built up to now. It was actually more work to take everything down than to leave it online, but again, everything was done in the interest of personal safety.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to go back online yet, as the situation apparently has worsened. Although we have delivered everything we promised, we understand why people are dissatisfied with the events, and we feel obligated to keep our fully functioning game online. Therefore, we plan to reopen the game in the coming days (as originally planned) and continue working on phase 2.
How did the players react? The developers claim that they had no intention of executing a “rug pull” and scamming all users. Instead, it was all just a big misunderstanding.
However, many users from the community did not buy this. According to the site PCGamer, which interviewed players on the new Discord of the community, the developers’ behavior is seen as a desperate attempt to salvage the situation. Because the developers apparently left too many traces and are now backpedaling out of fear of prosecution:
We have a kind of “data trail.” We have a Coinbase address that has funded a lot of things and a Cloudflare IP. They thought they had gotten away with [their rug pull], and now they know we have the trail they left behind.
What happens now? The community, which is still interested in an NFT Minecraft, then offered that the developers should just hand over their assets and they would finish the thing themselves.
The developers actually relented and promised to turn over the assets of the project, but still wanted to keep the millions from the NFT sale (in the form of 500 Ethereum). However, the fans want at least 200 Ethereum (approximately 448,000 euros at the current exchange rate) from the sale to continue financing the project.
Most rug pulls can hardly or not at all be refunded, so the community is realistic about what a settlement would look like. We agree that they [the developers] can keep some [of their sale]. We just want enough to operate the project.
Evidently, the operators of Blockverse are also in negotiations with the NFT platform NFTWorlds. It remains interesting to see how the situation develops. If we learn more here, we will keep you updated.
The topic of NFTs is still highly controversial among gamers. Therefore, senior managers at Ubisoft recently stated, in essence, “You have not yet realized how good NFTs are for you.“
