Imagine this - you are watching Mr. Beast drop a lambo into a shredder, and just before the good part, Jimmy cuts to an advert for a new league where you can play alongside some of the world's biggest 'gaming' creators for a cash prize. All for $19.99, plus you get a free box of Feastibles!

This is what Creator League was hoping to do with their membership pass system - buy a pass for your favorite gamer and qualify for a spot on their squad when it competes for a cash prize. Sounds great, right?

I'm sure you have all seen the fallout this week, which has resulted in layoffs, refunds, and another red mark against the use of blockchain in the gaming space. There is still much-unconfirmed information, and we're not here to gossip. Today, we'll dive into what happened, and what we can do better.

The League is on pause

As of writing, the latest news on the project is they will be stepping back to incorporate the community feed (read: backlash). The start of the downfall was when the project's integration with blockchain blindsided creators. The choice of network was NEAR, a layer one aiming to be "the OS for an open web" with a core tenant around user experience and onboarding.

The team has repeatedly reiterated that the passes are not NFTs as they cannot be resold or transferred - soul-bound to the account. Rather than tokens, NEAR would be used to "validate data and log information relating to the community passes." It's worth noting that eFuse was the recipient of a NEAR Foundation grant back in May 2022. The grant was approved for eFuse to create an NFT platform for users to mint gaming moments and build decentralized leagues with eFuse and NEAR.

Well what now?

Pass Holders

Since the project is now paused for the foreseeable future, buyers of membership passes can request a refund by emailing [email protected]. eFuse will also continue with an Open Fortnite tournament that is free to enter in the coming weeks.

eFuse

In shocking news, eFuse has restructured the company, resulting in many team layoffs. Our thoughts are with those impacted, and this begs the question of what more was going on behind the scenes as through the NEAR Foundation grant, ~$26m was distributed to eFuse and five other gaming projects.

Creators

The creators have since cut ties with the project following the discovery of the use of blockchain. Of course, I am not in private conversations with the creators, but know that ‘blockchain’ was heard and they immediately cut exposure (which may or may not be warranted, but I’ll expand on later). The impact has a much broader reach, with all their followers seeing their favorite creators back out due to the “scummy” blockchain tech. It shows how we still aren't there with education or, at least, changing the view on NFTs, cryptographically secure passes, crypto, or whatever you want to call it. But was it a rug pull if their Web2 partners started the cascade?

Trust me bro we need creators

A big proponent for the project is web3 gaming OG Brycent, who has already done loads championing the way with onboarding and education on the next generation of gaming. I agree with the last part of the quote that web3 gaming content creators are a must for adoption, but the application in the case of Creator League fell short.

Yes, it is on web3 content creators, but the job of onboarding a web2 gamer is enormous regardless of who you are, and the main issue comes from trust. You can’t build trust coming from a space that isn’t trusted, and I don’t blame non-crypto people. Most of the news we see is from rug pulls, hacks, or exploits, so no wonder people have negative connotations with the word.

The premise of Creator League as an activation event was great: use web2 ‘gamers’ (some questionable choices there) who have trusted audiences and have crypto underpin the experience. I’ll be talking about transparency next, and I don’t know what was said about disclosing the involvement of blockchain, but the failure was with the integration of the partners into the project.

We have numerous juggernauts that could bat for Web3 gaming (Shout outs Brycent, Stache, Hantao, Jonah, Iceyyy, the list goes on), and if they can be the champions of blockchain that educate and verify understanding it makes chances of success higher for onboarding users, and also reduces the conversations that web3 creators need to have. Similar to B2B and B2C relationships.

Current Model - Cold Engagement with Crypto

1. Web3 creator advises crypto project

2. Crypto project sources web2 partners

3. Partners engage with fans

4. Crypto questions are deferred or defaulted to “Crypto = bad”

Ideal Model - Winning Partners Before Users

1. Web3 creator educates and builds trust with web2 partner

2. Web2 creator sees value in tech

3. Web2 partner can engage with audience and act as a pillar for blockchain

Clear Comms Boiz - Why we need transparency

In the official update Creator League state the use of blockchain for “additional transparency to inventory levels for what was designed to be a limited release”. One of the big advantages to blockchain for data is its transparency, viewable by all, and the project chose to build a product including it over other data infrastructures. Through the Discord, Creator League and Mynt websites, there was no mention of blockchain being used.

There’s a real debate at the moment over whether blockchain should need to be disclosed or not. Other projects don’t need to disclose the use of AWS services in their backend then why should we have to in crypto? It seems like we are stuck in a position where if we are upfront about the use of blockchain, then it will be labelled as a scam and get push back. If we don’t mention it and people find out, it seems shady.

Abstracting user experience with blockchain away with noob friendly UI or infrastructure doesn’t mean that information shouldn’t be disclosed. Of course we can have a “light” version in an FAQ and a more detailed dive in a docs or wiki sites. The below take from 0xBEW summarised this point well. We have to remember that we are still fighting to show the value of the technology and with this comes disclosure.

Conclusion

Creator League showed us a glimpse of the power and reach that web2 creators and that the view on our little rocket to take us to the next dimension of gaming is still pretty negative. Are we to believe that creators were completely blindsided? I’m not so sure, but I’m not here to speculate.

A real big win this week was seeing everyone jump onto spaces or write threads on how we can do better and learn from this. There is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to merging the traditional gaming world and the small slice of blockchain tech which we sit in. Just like blockchain itself, we should be champions of transparency until the world is onboard.

As we say and beliveee… Web3 No Re 💛