When I first discovered drug wars, I was extremely excited. This seems like a great thing for the blockchain and crypto as well. Finally, a game that you can interact with and get paid while you are playing. I have been humbled, and I must admit that I was wrong.
I understood that it was structured like a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme but this did not turn me away because I liked the transparency of how the payout system was designed. Everything was up front you understood exactly how much Steem you were investing and you understood your potential payouts.
Drugwars has now progressed into a cancer. About a week ago they announced that the earnings would stop on your account if you went inactive for more than 2 weeks. This bothered a lot of people but it did not bother me that much. They also made a few other minor changes which didn't really affect me but I didn't like the fact that they were no longer transparent with these changes.
They announced yesterday that they will be doing away with their payouts and instead using in-game tokens which hold no value. This move actually upsets me. In fact it upsets most people who were playing the game. A lot of people invested a lot of money and tomorrow when this exit strategy is complete they will see no return on their investment.
In an attempt to lessen the blow of their exit strategy they will be switching over to a centralized cryptocurrency that they are in the process of creating. This decision was made rather quickly. They announced that it would be called future coin. A quick Google search shows that future coin already exists. Not only that, all future coin domains are still available for sale. Some at minimum values. They then posted in Discord about their mistake once I pointed it out.
Other people started pointing out flaws as well. As people would point out problems they would kick them from Discord. People who didn't agree with their decision were quickly removed. The first one I saw removed was . Others quickly followed. As people would voice their opinion they would be removed in an attempt to censor them. Any views or opinions were immediately censored.
I finally voiced my opinion in a polite manner about people losing their Investments. Two different people started calling me names and throwing insults at me. I asked them politely to stop with the personal insults and explained that I was just voicing my opinion. I was quickly censored.
They are now censoring anyone who uses the word investment. Maybe this is an attempt to cover the fact that people actually invested real money expecting returns. Once these Investments peaked and started to decline they shut the payouts down. Basically stealing the money and running. Now they are using that money to invest in their own Ico. No More steem.
In the beginning it was a great idea. Had it been left alone it could have developed into an amazing game. In the end it was still a great idea but people got hurt. No one could have known that they were just scamming everyone out of their money for their own Ico. I imagine this will probably be flagged into Oblivion in an attempt to censor it. Hopefully some get to read this before it reaches that point. This needs to stop. This is a huge kick in the face to crypto.