There is a subject to write about for the Social Media Challenge in Splinterlands this week so here are some of my thoughts on it...

Splinterlands Decline

It's honestly hard to be very positive about Splinterlands these days as the decline of what is a great game due to the continued inflation of assets while rewards keep going down and nothing new has been delivered when it comes down to fun gameplay for a very long time.

Being a player and card asset owner in the game has been brutal for a long time as the supply continues to increase while at the same time asset values continue to go down week after week after week with nothing really being done about it. It makes no sense right now for anyone who sees the game as something of an investment to buy packs or these promo cards .

However, the game does still have a target audience who are willing to throw money at it for fun without the need to expect a profit from it. However these are decreasing all the time and many like myself are done throwing money into a black hole especially while Crypto has been in a bull market now for 500+ Days!

Failed DOA Proposals!

The team a while ago made a proposal originally asking for 200.000$ in order to organise this event which was declined and afterward 200.000$ in DEC which was also declined by the community and also myself with a downvote. These events which create more card printing are a way for the team to get revenue and especially in times like this should only be done in case the project is in real danger of existence. I don't think there has been any update on what exactly the runway of the team is after the laydowns and rather disappointing sales of Rebellion. So I assume it's quite bad now, also the fact that the devs desperately want to get real money out of the DAO looks quite bad especially when trying to frame it as they are doing the DAO and SPS holders a favor.

Devs Dumping Assets ?

What really rubs me the wrong way first off is that they are doing 2 Promo cards instead of 1 like the last time and the fact that they are pretty much directly dumping a ton of their own Splinterlands holdings at a time when everyone already got totally crushed on them...

What almost surely will happen is that many players that bought the promo and won the prizes will try to dump them on the market to recover their investment while there is little to no demand pushing prices down even more. This devaluation of assets along with the lack of any new game mode or gameplay has been going on for so long and is totally killing the game with many leaving.

At the same time I don't believe there are bad intentions of the team with the goal of really making everything succeed and pump over time. This makes me believe their runway at the moment is really bad and we are in for more downside before a possible revival.

More Power Creep ?

The way things work is that the cards that can only really be bought by big spenders in pre-sales or promos being the most powerful and they seem to be getting stronger and stronger to the point where it's once again breaking the game. The Mantaroth which costs 40$ breaks the game making it less fun and already made it so that they needed to create a counter and the upcoming Legendary Summoners look to overpowered not learning anything from the disaster of Untamed where this was also the case.

I'm not sure how these new cards will be too powerful but especially the Legendary card looks like one which it's not going to be fun playing against as it can totally cripple your attack before the game even starts.

Current Sales ?

It looks like right now around 200M DEC was spend which at current price equals just 168k Dollars which is less than the team asked from the DAO in stablecoins.

Right now in total including Gold Foil Cards, there are 8556 Rare Card Copies in circulation and 2785 of the legendaries. At the current market price combined, these are valued at 70478$ which is actually a lot more as many likely got combined already.

Conclusion!

Even though I remain hopeful for Splinterlands in the long run, it's hard to be very positive on everything that is going down right now with continued asset devaluation and the lack of new fun game modes. This promo pretty much embodies this and it's just impossible for any player who somewhat cares about the investment aspect of the game to throw money at it. So my love-hate relationship with this game for now pretty much continues.