Daily Archives: March 21, 2023

CCP Once Again Fails to Read the Room, Announces Funding for Blockchain Title

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We’re back to blockchain at CCP.  Something, something, crypto, blockchain, Project Awakening.

I don’t even know what to say, aside from the fact that this will fail like every blockchain scheme has failed so far.  CCP can’t even make a second successful video game, so saddling any idea with blockchain nonsense seems like a double guarantee for failure.

It was just a year ago when we saw CCP’s CEO bragging about hanging out with a bunch of crypto grifters at GDC.

Hilmar in the middle of the crypto suite

The backlash was such that they had to swear that NFT meant Not For Tranquility.

You might think that sort of experience with your installed and paying player base might cause the company pause.  But no.  Pearl Abyss has invested heavily in blockchain and dammit, they’re going to get something out of it… and Hilmar is apparently just the sucker to believe he can do it.

So the announcement today is that Andreesen Horowitz… as in Marc Andreesen, whose one claim to fame was to be in the right place at the right time to make Netscape happen, and then sell it to AOL before its failure became manifest… is investing $40 million with CCP to fund them creating and “innovative new AAA game set in the EVE Online universe.”

To start with, as some devs I know are probably saying, it is charming to think that $40 million gets you the league of AAA games.

Then there is the fact that blockchain is pretty much a landscape of failure, an idea that has no practical application, a technology that is simply a tax on transactions promoted by rent seeking venture capitalists, and any benefit from it can be done… has been done… cheaper, faster, and easier with existing technology.  It is a garbage idea promoted by scammers.  It belongs in a museum alongside ideas for perpetual motion and those tablets that would turn water into gasoline.

But even with the spectacular failures and the myriad of stolen apes, people keep pushing on this like it just hasn’t found the right home.  I wonder how many of last year’s crypto startups are even still around, or are still investing in this?

The Blockchain Game Alliance – GDC 2022

Oh Ubisoft, there you are, right at the top, right where you belong when it comes to bad ideas.

Anyway, this is me posting angry in the morning.  I’ll probably have something coherent to say at some future date, possibly when they have something beyond overblown expectations and empty quotes about the project, should that ever come to pass.

But it will no doubt have an impact on CCP and what they work on.  Software development isn’t 100% a zero sum game, but it can be close to it.  You can only work on so many things at once.  If we’re lucky maybe this fiasco will just pull resources off of their first person shooter project.

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