The once over hype NFT based game in the year 2021 called the “Metroverse” has recently rug pull, putting investors to tears as they watch their investment amount to nothing.
Metroverse team did an extensive adverts during the bull market between 2021 and 2022, commenced minting of the Genesis block collection in January 2022. Of which the project sold out quickly with many investors jumping on the idea of the NFT based game, thus generating the project creators 2,000 ETH which amounts to $6.3 million. This is exclusive of the 5% royalties they receive on the 25,361 ETH in trading volume since the beginning of the project.
The Metroverse was a land base NFT trading strategy game, with a game mechanics which was liken to that of the popular “Sim City” game. The Metroverse NFTs were so flashy and well designed that it was exciting when you look at the buildings on each blocks, this drew in a lot of people to the project and the fanbase grew exponentially.
According to a source, many gamers who invested into this project, they said “The project delivered a game that was a far cry from Sim City, and which only a small subset of players designated as “leaders” could even play.” But this did not deter some investors who bought more NFT blocks when the team released the “blackout collection”.
However, as interest in NFTs and Cryptocurrency prices began to fall, the Metroverse community became increasingly dissatisfied with the project creators, who they believe have not actually deliver the game as expected and also that the creators are more interested in cash grabbing via minting, which lead the community to take actions like performing a reverse-split of the token which they believed harmed secondary market prices.
This lead to tensions between the project team and the metroverse community, with the project team dismissing all criticism as “FUD” and accusing their community members of “sabotage”, and community members accusing the project team of rug-pulling and failing to listen to feedback.
The team shut down the project Discord, claiming that the community was only making it harder for them to do what they had promised to do, and saying that the attacks were damaging to their mental health. The team promised to complete the last item on the roadmap, but stated that they would not be continuing to develop the project or add additional roadmap items due to the current NFT markets and the “non-stop attacks from the community”.
But the only reason the team decided to close all the discord group related to the Metroverse project, was in fear of the community finding out their real intension. Shortly after closing the Discord, the project team changed their mind and announced that they would be closing the project entirely. They announced that the upcoming battle in the game played by only the leaders of various cities, would be the last available to play, but that they would be airdropping tokens to players as promised in the last item on the roadmap, and open-sourcing the code.
Members of the community woke up to this shocking news and on further investigation, they found out that many of the project team members have deleted their social media account, and project AMAs were wiped from the Metroverse YouTube channel. On checking on opensea, all the listed NFTs both the Genesis and Blackout collections were all deleted. Below are link to some of the metroverse chanels
Community notice from Metroverse
Metroverse Fireside/AMA – Jan. 2023, YouTube
Tweet by Metroverse
These gestures were far from enough to satisfy an angry community, some of whom threatened to dox the anonymous team behind the game or take legal action against the founders. The team themselves fired back with legal threats, contacting community members to tell them that they believed their conversations on a separate Discord server involved illegal activities that are “not only morally reprehensible but may also constitute serious criminal offenses”.
Further interaction with some of the members of the community, many claimed they have lost lot of money to the project. Some spent tens of thousands of dollars on the project, a friend of mine spent 25ETH, the other spent almost $250k. I also personally invested into the project about 2ETH.