There has been a rather sad development for the play-2-earn game Realm today. When I logged into play the game this morning I was faced with the following message:
On seeing the message above, I dutifully logged into discord to find the following announcement:
They are going to pull the plug on the game. This announcement came out of the blue, although I'd say with hindsight you could see that the developers were loosing interesting since about season 10 or so.
Discord Fallout
The reaction in the chat threads within their own page on discord has been very negative. Many people have poured quite a lot of investment into Realm, and its just being wrapped up without much notice.
There are lots of thread posts from people that have dropped lots of WAX for Realm NFTs even in the last few days - with a lot of people having forked out thousands of WAX.
[Credit: Price RLM/WAX price chart on Alcor at the time of posting on 7th Aug 24]
In addition the price of RLM, the in-game currency, has tanked dropping 58% today - no surprise. People are trying to offload NFTs and get rid of their RLM.
RLM In-game
Many players have RLM staked in-game, because it earns 36.5% APR. The problem being that to withdraw, first of all you have a 72 hours unstaking period. Once unstaked, you then have a withdrawal limits - its something like 5000 RLM per hour, which isnt a lot. Some people have 1,000,000+ RLM staked, so it would literally take them weeks upon weeks to get it all out.
Accordingly some people are very hacked off, and they have used pretty harsh language on discord.
So far it seems that the developers have not made any responses after placing the announcement.
Many people are particularly hacked off because the developers extended their start of season promo sale for this season. They increased the price per pack and offered more packs for sale, drawing in buyers with the release of some rare NFTs (truckers). As such, many are calling it a deliberate move by the developers to raise additional funds, knowing that they were then going to shutdown the game. I was once of the people that bought one of those packs.
Realm 2.0 ???
Although the current developers are clearly pulling out, a number of other developers are offering to take on the game and continue it, but so far these offers are not being responded to.
My View
I have genuinely loved Realm. I started playing it back in May 2013, and have been obsessed with it since then. I have invested into it, but luckily not huge amounts, and not any of my personal fiat. I have to say I'm really sad about it, but I also think the developers are letting the players down. They should have given more notice, and or they should engage around options to keep the game running as a going concern via new owners.
I will loose my investment, however luckily I dont have a lot of RLM (just 35k) - although I did actually buy about 60 WAX worth of RLM this week and dumped it into staking within the game. So thats pretty much lost. It would have actually been 20 WAX more, if I hadnt been lazy these last two nights (thank goodness for laziness !!!).
There is one potential minor saving grace. You can actually use your Realm leader NFTs and stake them within Wombat Dungeon Master (DM) to earn WOMBAT. So I guess thats where my NFTs will go once the game folds. I wonder if it will even be worth buying some realm NFTs at low prices if they give good bonuses within Wombat DM - who knows.
Anyway, its a sad day for play-2-earn gaming on the Wax blockchain - but thats the crypto world for you. Here today, going tomorrow.
Last word
The funny thing to come out today, is that one punter produced a 'Rugged by Realm NFT' !
This came out for sale today - sort of funny I guess - maybe not so much if you dropped thousands of WAX like some.
Anyway - I thought it worth sharing. Good luck to any Hivers that have been playing Realm. I hope you can recover some value, or preferably, someone else takes the game on and keeps it going. Fingers crossed.