Splinterlands, a WEB3 game from the Play2Earn turned Play2Own genre, has seen a rise in the number of bots and specifically bot farms (e.g., 10,000 accounts run by one entity to extract value from the game). This bot thing seems to have come to a tipping point, as evidenced by the increasing air time the topic has hoarded from in recent Town Hall meetings. The Splinterlands team holds a TRANSPARENT stand-up Transparency is a crucial value of WEB3 Ethos staff meeting curated by the CEO, & the leaders of all aspects within the company, every Monday for all to see and hear!) Many community members are pretty p15$@d off about the issue and want the bots eradicated, although not everyone feels this way.
The community is divided on how to address this issue, some advocating for an outright ban on all bots and others feeling that such a ban would be challenging to enforce and could additionally conflict with fundamental WEB3 values centered around ****decreasing*** such centralized structures.
On the one hand, players who advocate for a ban on bots argue that the increasing number of bot farms is impacting the game's fairness and reducing the reward pool for legitimate players. They believe it is unfair that bots are taking away opportunities from human players, decreasing motivation to play in ranked rewards battles, and for some, decreasing their overall satisfaction with the game.
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On the other hand, players who oppose an outright bot ban argue that it would be difficult to identify which accounts are being operated by bots and which are not. They also express concern that banning bot accounts could create new problems, such as centralization and gatekeeping, which would go against the core principles of WEB3, which have structured and informed the foundation upon which Splinterlands was built.
Take the WEB3 value: Permission-less, which, according to Leofinance glossary is defined as a blockchain network in which users have equal permission to use and interact with the network and in which users' permission to use and interact with the network is not set by the network itself or any central person or institution.
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As the community continues to debate the best way forward, it is essential to acknowledge that bot farms pose a real challenge. Yes, it can be annoying to see a name repeated 12 times across the leader board (FrankBot5, FrankBot349, FrankBot9023, FrankBot675) and disturbing to hear just how much value 10,000 silver botted accounts can extract from the game (thank you, AfterSound, for that). However, the solution requires something more thoughtful than "kick them out." Finding a solution that aligns with the values of WEB3 while also addressing the negative impact of bot farms will require careful consideration and collaboration among all stakeholders.
Matt & Aggroed, the co-founders of Splinterlands, have traditionally taken a hands-off approach to bots. Still, in recent months, they have entertained more community questions and discussions around the topic. Matt has been actively working on solutions to "disincentivize" botted accounts by making it more challenging to win rewards and increasing incentives for accounts with higher BCX cards.
One of these solutions is being released today, 1/31/23: SOUL BOUND reward cards, which cannot be sold, traded, or rented on the marketplace. Players will receive these cards in the new reward chests instead of the sellable reward card assets they previously received. Soul-bound cards are unsellable for the duration of their print, which are theoretically less valuable and life-sustaining for the botted accounts. In the past, these accounts have received such rewards in mass and then promptly dumped them onto the market, extracting resources from the game to fund still more accounts. We shall try on this solution and see how the theory translates to reality. :-)
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Ultimately, the future of Splinterlands will rest in the hands of the community members. By communicating our ideas through the active proposal system, discord, guilds, thoughtful content creation, and open discussion, we will find clever and creative, and innovative solutions that balance the concerns of our community, and the game can continue to grow and thrive as a leader in the WEB3 space. The days for harsh, fear-based reactionary regulation have passed; this is not our way. The rise of bot farms in Play2earn gaming is ubiquitous with this play2earn gaming (EVEN non-P2E), and it is a complex issue that requires the collective and thoughtful effort of the community to resolve. As the community grapples with uncovering the best path forward, remember why and what you are doing here; lean on those values for the next right-indicated step. Trust this and act from there.
Thanks for reading.
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Posted using Splintertalk