In 2021, at the height of the global collective blockchain madness, a video game called Untamed Isles – Pokemon, but with crypto stuff—Earned over $500,000 on Kickstarter. A year later, the game is practically dead and so broke it can’t even repay its backers.
in the a post on the game’s Steam pagethe developers said “we need to pause development of Untamed Isles and put the project on hold”, which sounds only temporary until you read the rest of what they have to say:
There were a variety of factors that have led to this moment, but it all boils down to our financial inability to keep up with the demands of our endeavor.
Untamed Isles is a very ambitious title as it is an open-world monster-catching MMORPG. To work on this project we onboarded more than 70 employees and we worked tirelessly for more than 2 years to build the game we all dreamed of. The truth is that the development costs are high and there have been many bumps in our journey to this moment. Since we started the journey in 2020, the economic landscape has changed dramatically, both generally and for cryptocurrencies specifically, and we are not confident about the current market. We have run out of funds and cannot continue development at the moment.
When they say the “economic landscape has changed dramatically,” they mean “The ass fell out of the crypto marketon which we have put your money”:
We leaned into the crypto market and quickly expanded due to the positive interest. When the crash came, we were heavily exposed with a runway that was too short. The game remains game-first, crypto-second in design, but crypto funds are and will remain essential in getting us to release. Unlike many projects that have failed by storm, we actually have a great game design that could stand on its own. But until the crypto situation is resolved – and we are confident that it will eventually be – we need to hibernate the development of this project.
And that ass fell out so far say the developers in a separate post “As our cash reserves are depleted, we are unable to repay our original supporters. We are really sorry and we wish this scenario was different.”
While this might be the part of the story where I say everyone who supports this game got exactly what they deserved, this is a fact Untamed Island Crypto elements were optional, and from backer feedback below the “Hiatus” announcement on Kickstarter, many people were only interested in the game itself, not its speculative elements:
Untamed Island “Hiatus” is particularly oddly given it was only two weeks ago that the team confirmed a launch date of October 6, 2022 and that one of their key promises at the time of the Kickstarter campaign was, “We are fortunate to have funding that will allow us to safely deliver the core functionality and gameplay.” “.