Splinterlands, the brainchild of Hive has taken on bad players who disrupt the old-timers' ability to make money. But one step at a time.

What are the problems of Splinterlands?

Splinterlands actually has a couple of problems in my opinion:
* The game is incredibly weak.
* It only exists because you can easily milk the Hive
* Anyone could play a level by paying only $10.

The third point is the most important. Want to play and start building yourself up? All you needed was $10 and the right amount of time. You could use rewards to quickly build a very small deck, and use credits to buy others. Or just make money from the game, maybe not the best option, but possible.

It can not be

Many beginners played in low tiers, which allowed them to play the game without paying hundreds or thousands of dollars. And that makes the game pointless, your goal is to pay as much as possible.

What does the new update introduce?

The fact that in addition to paying $10, you have to scrape together a deck - either rent (from whales, of course) or buy. And then win massively. If you're doing poorly, you only have to win 100 matches a day assuming you don't have a super powerful game sense, which most players don't have. Of course, there's also a limit called ECR, which makes those 100 matches you have to win in 25 fights, which is physically impossible.

Of course, whales are supposed to encourage you to:
- Write texts on Hive so you buy cards with them (or rent them)
- Keep trying

And so on and so forth. Well ;)

Why is this unfair?

Obviously it's very difficult what the creators say, but they're betting on it. But how does one become a Splinterlands whale? When I started the game, it was:
- Starters could be obtained for free, or for a fee of $3. Of course officially it was still $10, but if you wrote that you wanted it cheaper you got it straight from the creators.
- You got 5 cards a day. Of course if you're some kind of super whale you'll get a lot more, but it's much easier to complete a deck than counting on luck. These cards are worth a fortune.

All in all, that's it :P Cheaper and better.

And now the creators of Splinterlands are trying to prove that it's not like they're giving new players a hard time. they still have a chance! They even made a streaming video of a guy getting his ass handed to him so badly that he hasn't even accomplished anything and is almost done playing.

Do we want to play something?

In general, I've been working on another card game, admittedly unrelated to cryptocurrencies - Summoned Monsters. It's kind of a first-gen Yu-Gi-Oh! poorclone, ever since Konami started massacring that title with monetization. The game is FLOSS and I think it will suck you in for much longer ;)

I think Splinterlands just like the rest of cryptogames of this type - Pay2win will fade away. But that's my opinion, who knows who knows.