Pixelmon, one of the most-hyped NFT games this year, revealed its in-game artwork last Saturday. However, not to the amusement of early investors.
I was laughing out so loud in my living room and now my 5 year old thinks less of me hhah
— Cryptoism🦇🔊 (@Cryptoism888) February 27, 2022
Pixelmon founder calls reveal a “horrible mistake”
Earlier this month, Pixelmon collected over 70 million USD in their NFT presale, which set them up on the right path for building what they called Web3’s first AAA-quality game. The pieces changed hands at a price between 2.4 and 3 ETH at a Dutch auction.
Now, the first Pixelmon artworks have officially been revealed, and they are, to say it mildly, unimpressive. Via Twitter, Pixelmon founder Syber called the reveal “unacceptable”, blaming technical limitations on OpenSea for the way the NFTs turned out:
OpenSea has limitations to their 3D compatibility so we had to continuously downscale this (in 3D) to fit what they could handle. And so, some look [like] a shitty game from the 90s right now and do not reflect what they look like in game.
However, most of the disgruntled early investors aren’t buying the downscaling excuse for delivering what can be best described as Generation 3 Pokemon interpreted by a depressed Pablo Picasso. One person even reported to have received a Pixelmon that is apparently invisible:
They sold you Microsoft XP. pic.twitter.com/jF1psjrlaH
— Scoot Nunchuck (@NunchuckScoot) February 26, 2022
Project’s going south — let’s buy some jpegs
To make matters even worse, “on-chain sleuth” zachxbt reports some unusual transactions from the dev’s multi-sig wallet, causing some to speculate that Pixelmon will end up getting rug-pulled. In a Twitter thread, he describes that some of the dev funds have been used to purchase third-party NFTs.
Syber confirmed this on Pixelmon’s Discord channel, stating that the dev multisig purchased NFTs because “the market took a dip”. Furthermore, zachxbt accuses the Pixelmon devs to reuse 3D models from the Unity Asset Store, instead of designing their own artwork.
Also here https://t.co/IkJZ4VCKeA
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 26, 2022
Via Twitter, Syber stated that he will continue working on Pixelmon and that the funds will be used to build and improve the game. By his account, 2 million USD have been set aside for a complete revamp of the artwork at the hands of a reputable design studio:
What I’m saying is sorry. On behalf of myself. On behalf of Pixelmon. For the poor way we have begun our journey. Our journey has just begun and we will work hard to earn back the trust of the community no matter how long it takes.
