Otherside got $450M from Yuga Labs but its latest game is ‘virtually unplayable’
The newest sport from Otherside, an NFT gaming agency backed with $450 million price of funding from Bored Ape Yacht Membership’s Yuga Labs, debuted final weekend with chaotic, buggy outcomes.
Challenge Dragon, a third-person shooter hosted within the Otherside ‘metaverse,’ launched on Saturday. Within the sport, gamers compete to carry and seize goals throughout an 8-bit metropolis map.
Thus far, it’s obtained a blended reception. Some customers, many with NFT profile footage, have praised the sport, whereas others have described it as ‘chaos,’ ‘buggy,’ ‘unresponsive,’ and having ‘horrible intention lag.’
One participant stated on X (previously Twitter) that they stop the sport after simply quarter-hour of gameplay. “Nonetheless can’t consider that after tens of millions of {dollars} and several other years, that is the product they got here up with,” they stated.
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One other complained, “We had been speculated to have a completely purposeful metaverse by the tip of 2023. We’re approaching the tip of 2024. We’ve got none of that and each sport has been a failure.”
One consumer had a extra blended response to the discharge. “It was fairly buggy, intention lag was horrible, and it wasn’t actually all that enjoyable to be fully sincere,” they stated. Nevertheless, they added “Quite a lot of potential right here, I simply hope it will definitely involves fruition (sooner moderately than later).”
Yuga Labs raised $450 million in March 2022 and reportedly used these funds to construct its ‘metaverse’ video games undertaking, Otherside. Each Yuga Labs and Otherside have launched varied video games and occasions, together with Dookey Labs, Journey 1, Journey 2, and an upcoming Dookey Sprint sequel.
This 12 months, Yuga Labs gave up the mental property rights to 2 of its video games as a way to ‘unshackle’ its staff. The NFT agency additionally introduced quite a few worker layoffs this 12 months.
CEO of Yuga Labs knew the sport could be chaotic
Challenge Dragon was apparently playtested with just some hundred gamers however then launched with a participant depend of over a thousand.
Yuga Labs CEO Greg Solano stated on X, “Unhealthy information: Doing this at scale revealed some bugs that didn’t present up once we did inner exams with just a few hundred.” As a optimistic, he stated “It’s hilariously chaotic. On a platform degree, shit’s working.”
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Solano did be aware earlier than launch that this could be the case. He stated, “That is early af. That is the worst model of Challenge Dragon you’re ever going to expertise as a result of we’re going to be iterating on this sport each single month.”
Certainly a lot of the reward was based mostly round the truth that it was chaotic, regardless of making components of the sport just about unplayable. Others additionally defended the sport’s early state.
Saturday’s Challenge Dragon launch was the primary in a collection of occasions scheduled for the approaching months as a part of an ‘always-evolving expertise’ of demos. To play the sport, gamers had been advised to log in with their X account and pockets of option to create a Yuga Labs ID.
Gamers additionally wanted an NFT from one among 13 units, together with Bored Ape Yacht Membership, Otherdeed, Grailed Moonbirds, Meebits, and HV-MTL to call just a few.
