Not since the spirited days of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have we seen a crypto sector so piping hot that it’s made its rounds in every single social media platform around the world. Grandmothers and teenagers, white-collar suits and blue-collar hardhat, they’ve all heard about non-fungible tokens or NFTs… if not already got their hands on some.
There is, of course, something called decentralized finance (DeFi) that also enjoyed its time in the sun but nothing has really captured the imagination of mainstream regular people the way NFTs have. These days too, it’s popular to view DeFi and NFT as just single components of a multiple layer ecosystem of decentralized services running on Web3 but we’re not here to talk about that today.
Last year, in March 2021, Christie’s made history selling a piece of digital art, via an NFT associated with it, for a cool $69 million. And since then, we’ve been covering all kinds of other ways people have found to do NFTs – from individual artists, to music bands, and blockchain games.
But while the headlines might suggest everyone’s gleaning off some success from NFT, not everyone or every company’s been getting sunshine and joy. In fact, some companies have found that simply jumping aboard the NFT train without actually understanding if it was the right model for them results in unhappy endings.
In this article, we take a look at some high-profile NFT oops moments in the industry.
- South Korean boy band BTS – climate conflict
We can’t talk about hype without mentioning South Korea, can we? From Gangnam Style to Squid Game, the world is pretty much transfixed by anything from the East Asian country. And when it comes to K-pop, it doesn’t get any bigger than boy band BTS.
So when BTS decided to launch their own NFTs, cue screaming fans jostling for a share of tokens, right? Well, not really.
As rabid as BTS fans are (and they are), supporters took to social media to stage a revolt after hearing the news, threatening boycotts and even lodging environmental complaints.
Now, blockchain’s effect on climate has always been a rather misinformed argument, but we’ll not get into that, and focus instead on the fact that BTS is a climate activist that has spoken in favor of more measures to curb energy waste at the United Nations.
Lesson learnt: They’re still going ahead with NFTs for photo cards this year but maybe the teachable moment here is to understand a technology properly to ensure it doesn’t clash with your professed principles.
- GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 – lootbox lookalike
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl was a sequel to a hugely popular title produced by GSC Game World. Anticipation was high from millions of fans, so when the company decided to announce its own metaverse that would work with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), fans went hopping mad.
To be fair, when you ask players to register for drops and then suggest that they would have to pay for NFTs to wear all kinds of things in a game they’d previously had for free, you can bet they’d go livid. Especially not when NFTs weren’t needed, as all they did in the game was represent skins… which any regular game already does without NFT technology.
Perhaps the only surprise here was that the company CEO was so surprised at the backlash, and his feeble explanations of using NFTs for immersive experiences didn’t buy him any brownie points with angry gamers.
In fact, gamers in general don’t like this NFT attitude by big gaming houses and liken it to in-game microtransactions that gamers in general really hate as it encourages “pay-to-win” mindsets, and GSC World aren’t the only ones to experience fan anger on NFT plans. Ask Ubisoft!
Lesson learnt: Don’t use NFTs to replace a functionality that already works so well and certainly, don’t make existing users pay more for the privilege to use it as gamers hate the idea of microtransactions or fancier words to sell lootboxes.
- Discord – cashgrab distaste
Discord used to be the go-to platform for gamers and streamers, but its usage surged in popularity during and after the 2016/17 crypto rally. These days, you can’t really count yourself as a blockchain project with a community if you don’t have a Discord presence, and some NFT projects have really found Discord to be a great way to quickly grow as it gives users direct and real-time connections with the project developers.
However, when Discord themselves innocently asked their users about NFT/DeFi/Web 3, the general response from their users was less than positive. It led to a massive uprising with many users sharing screenshots of their cancelled Nitro subscriptions (paid subscription for additional Discord features) citing the disgust for NFT considerations that most of them felt were little more than a cashgrab move.
Discord have publicly denied they’re doing NFTs, telling The Verge that they were merely doing fact-finding: “We’re always exploring and hacking away at things we think will improve Discord for all the communities we serve. This includes research that helps us learn about what people want.”
Dodged a bullet there, didn’t you, Discord?
Lesson learnt: People are happy to pay for services, but will never want to pay for additional things they don’t need and have never asked for, especially if it’s merely an act of jumping on the hype train.