Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-like NFT game that uses cute little creatures to double as NFTs to fight for fun and profit. The game is notorious for relying on cheap labor from third world countries to drive its growth. Now inflation in the game, coupled with a $600 million worth of cryptocurrency thefts, has thrown Axie's economy into chaos.
Developed by Sky Mavis, the game revolves around collecting, breeding, and fighting against a type of cartoon character called Axes. These cartoon characters are NFTs that exist on the Ethereum blockchain, and players can use Axes to harvest a currency called SLP, and then use its reproduction to create more Axes. Importantly, both Axies and SLP can be traded on the open market in real money.
As a result, Axie Infinity became a highly financialized community, driven by a commitment to future wealth and built on a constant influx of new players. Many of these new players can't buy Axes directly, so older players rent out their Axes to newcomers. The Axie community calls the owner of the rental Axes "manager," while the worker in charge of playing the game is called a "scholar," and the overall arrangement is a "guild."
And because many low-level players are poor workers from the Philippines or elsewhere who earn a living by playing gold, this model is also called "digital colonialism" by some.
The whole thing is reminiscent of gold strikes in MMO like World of Warcraft. As The Verge reports, this is also very lucrative for developer Sky Mavis, but the model relies on dreams of future revenue growth, as the game itself has little intrinsic value. This dream has recently begun to shatter due to gameplay changes and SLP inflation.
Last month, the game recorded the largest cryptocurrency heist in history: more than $600 million worth of NFTs were stolen due to hacking. Since then, the fragile capitalist colonial system in Axie Infinity has been spiraling upwards.
"The digital 'landlords' mentioned by the developers of Axie Infinity are furious because their 'academics' (Filipino employees hired in game money) are all exiting the game without showing their weekly quotas." YouTube channel owner Dan Olson tweeted on April 12. GamesRadar reports that a quick search of Twitter and Reddit shows that players are starting to complain about the state of the game and the lack of cheap labor to sustain their investments.
"After a busy day at work finally (ended) it's great to see the slow rise in SLP." One player wrote, "But last week some 'academics' abandoned me, so I think it's time to look for new axie 'scholars' again." ”
"I have a fish farm and a plantation. There are also 10 'scholars'. Another veteran player wrote, "But they almost all quit." Now my Axes value is 10% of the cost of my cultivation. I learned a lot from Axie. ”
Since Axie Infinity is a real-time service game, it turns out that even cryptocurrencies are as difficult to balance the resource economy and character development as the real world. As the proliferation of Axes led to the cultivation of more SLPs, the value of SLPs began to decline continuously. Currently, the only way to remove SLP from the game is to breed Axes.
To address this, Sky Mavis removed SLP farming from adventure mode in February, but the supply of SLP did not shrink, but continued to rise. Players are now calling for new ways to "burn" SLPs to stop runaway inflation.
Player-owned in-game land has always been another big pain point. Sky Mavis started selling a few years ago, but the game mechanics are still under development. Originally scheduled to launch in early 2020, it was later pushed to 2021 and still only has a rough release date for 2022.
"The early people who bought the land basically used their assets with zero returns, and they could have done a lot of other things with the money, all because Sky Mavis had been promising that the fourth quarter of 2021 would be the release date for the land, and now, they seem to be treating the current landowner as an hindsight." One player wrote on reddit.
Other players are now debating whether to quit or stick with it and see if Axie Infinity's economy will rebound. One player wrote: "Let's be realistic, we are here because we have the potential to make money. Otherwise the discussion would be a waste of time. I'm holding my axes, and I don't care if it's worthless, but I'm not going to sell it at the price it's now. ”