‘Wolf Game’ Halted After Solana Relaunch Prompts Backlash

Wolf Recreation first launched in 2021, garnering a die-hard participant neighborhood over its four-year lifespan throughout each the Ethereum mainnet and finally layer-2 community Blast. However gamers aren’t proud of final week’s 2.0 relaunch on Solana, with some saying the transfer destroyed the whole lot they’d grinded years for as a consequence of new “complicated” mechanics.

In response, Wolf Recreation 2.0 was halted on Monday, liquidity was faraway from its just lately launched Solana token, and the CEO behind the sport mentioned that he has stepped down.

When enjoying the unique Wolf Recreation expertise, gamers may both personal a sheep or wolf NFT. These with a sheep may passively farm the WOOL token, whereas it was the job of the wolves to loot these earnings. Wolf gamers may even steal different gamers’ sheep NFTs—with all of this taking place on-chain, in fact.

This distinctive mechanic and crypto-native gameplay loop led to it garnering a bustling neighborhood, and finally to recreation writer Pixel Vault buying the sport in August 2023 for an undisclosed sum. A yr later, Wolf Recreation migrated from Ethereum mainnet to layer-2 community Blast, which got here amid a serious airdrop farming push.

On Wednesday final week, Wolf Recreation introduced that its new token on Solana was reside and offered “Wolf Recreation 2.0,” which claimed to have expanded the token’s utility by way of new in-game mechanics. Nevertheless, it wasn’t properly acquired.

Gamers discovered the reimagined model of the sport “complicated,” with a lack of clarification for its mechanics coming from its builders. One participant mentioned that they’d “no clue what’s taking place,” with pseudonymous Wolf Recreation CEO GFunk saying that explainers would come later. Within the meantime, a neighborhood member referred to as FarmerPiddy took the mantle to clarify how the brand new recreation works.

The brand new gameplay loop requested gamers to burn their wolf, sheep, land, and different NFTs they’d grinded for within the earlier recreation’s evolution. However in doing this, gamers weren’t reimbursed with a 1-for-1 model of the burned asset. Quite, players would earn new in-game belongings like “Shep’s Kiss,” which may very well be utilized in mini-games.

“What the hell is Shep’s Kiss? You’re asking us to burn our wolves, sheep, lands, and different belongings,” disgruntled neighborhood member Digital Optimyst wrote on X, previously Twitter. “Why would you destroy one thing with a powerful, loyal neighborhood—one thing constructed round Shep’s imaginative and prescient, the unique white paper, and the joys of threat and reward?”

On prime of this, the two.0 relaunch didn’t embody the Valley Recreation 2.0, an upgraded model of a well-liked mini-game that was hyped by the official X account again in September of final yr.

The backlash grew too loud on Monday, resulting in the sport being halted and GFunk twice claiming to have “stepped down.” GFunk didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.

The official X assertion mentioned that GFunk was working with the Farmhands Council to determine the following steps. The Farmhands Council, generally shortened to FHC, is a bunch of gamers and WOOL holders that had been nominated by way of the WOOL governance system. By becoming a member of the Council, people have a chance to have their say on upcoming modifications to the sport.

A number of Farmhand Council members have claimed by way of Discord that they didn’t see a proposal of the modifications. One other member, JohnStargaryen, mentioned that the Council didn’t see the brand new model of the sport till every week earlier than the rollout, with “a number of individuals” voicing considerations that it shouldn’t launch.

Now, players are calling out for a neighborhood takeover, or CTO, to revive the sport.

“I’ve by no means seen better lore for a CTO since Pudgy Penguins,” pseudonymous crypto enterprise capitalist Beanie mentioned on X. “The very best half is that Wolf Recreation artwork is CC0. Nice alternative for an aspiring dev to return in and immediately get the help of many individuals, together with me.”

CC0, in any other case referred to as Artistic Commons Zero, implies that its art work is within the public area, permitting it to be freely used and commercialized—NFT tasks like Moonbirds opted for this mannequin in 2022. Because of this a Wolf Recreation reboot may use official art work with out the necessity of a proper acquisition, whereas the on-chain recreation belongings are composable and thus may very well be usable in different apps.

For now, the Wolf Recreation workforce maintains that it’s listening to its neighborhood, will restore burned belongings, and is engaged on the “subsequent steps” for the title.

Edited by Andrew Hayward