One year ago, the company “Irrevent Labs” raised 40 million US dollars for a game where robot roosters were supposed to fight against each other. A blockchain enthusiast announced in April 2022 that the game was “the future of gaming” and should “last for 100 years.” But in 2023, NFTs are apparently dead, and the creators of this game are now turning to the new hype topic of “Artificial Intelligence.”
What was the idea of the game?
- MechaFightClub was supposed to be a game, that focused on the then hype topic “NFT” and let robot roosters fight against each other: the excitement of cockfighting without all the hassle of cruelty and animal abuse.
- The idea was that each rooster would become a “Mechabot” that was made unique through the blockchain.
- The game was supposed to be “Play2Earn”: Players should be able to earn money while playing “MechaFightClub” by leveling up their roosters and then selling them.
More about the “future of gaming”:
Investors poured money into the project because the team seemed “competent”
In a blog post from a blockchain enthusiast on April 18, 2022, the game was described as “The Future of Gaming”: “Machine Learning” was supposed to make it a “game for 100 years.”
All the checkbox items that were so important at the time for “the next big hype” were marked with a tick (via medium).
Anyone who could mention “Machine Learning”, “Blockchain”, and “Play2Earn” in one sentence without stuttering apparently discovered the key to attracting massive investments.
One of the managers who invested in the game, Arianna Simpson, said in 2022: At first, they thought the game sounded “weird”, but she still invested because she considered the team to be “serious” and “capable” – additionally, the team had a “good sense of humor” with a vibrant Discord community (via decrypt).
This is what the “game for 100 years” looked like:
Game put into “permanent hibernation” – supposedly due to unclear legal situation
How did this turn out? After just over a year, the project is now over, as the NFT-critical site Kotaku reports with some Schadenfreude.
The company has put the game into a permanent hibernation and offers to buy back the roosters for 18 Sol each. 1 Solana is currently worth about 19 €. A year ago it was still almost 50 €.
Critics believe: NFT hype is over – Silicon Valley is now into AI
As Kotaku reports, the company attributes the discontinuation of its game to issues with US regulators. It is said that the lack of clarity makes it difficult for blockchain companies to operate in the USA. The company speaks of “regulatory uncertainty” – one cannot develop an in-game economy if clear guidelines are missing.
However, Kotaku suspects other reasons: Apparently, the company has lost faith in “NFT” and is now turning, like the rest of Silicon Valley, to the hype technology “Artificial Intelligence.”
As Kotaku reports, the game’s YouTube channel stopped hyping the NFT game a while ago and switched to AI.
Now the head of the studio talks in an interview about how his company has achieved a “significant breakthrough in AI technology.” They can now generate “short-form videos from a picture” using an AI model. They want to scale this up.
According to Kotaku, it is a “perfect example of desperation” that the company Irrevent Labs has switched from “Mech-rooster fighting game” to “AI-based video creator” within a year.
Unfortunately, the “future of MMORPGs” has also gambled a bit:
What happened to the man who received $500 million and promised to build the MMORPGs of the future?
