The video game token, known as Plant vs Undead, reached a maximum average of $ 24, and players made more than $ 500 a month.
The success of the game Axie Infinity (AXS), which unites blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs and a new way of playing on the internet, in which money is earned by interacting with the game, a system called play-to-earn, has given rise to numerous competitors who promise a profitability equal to or even higher than Axie's.
One of these games was Plant vs Undead, a game that soon attracted the attention of players in the blockchain universe and, with it, saw its value quickly rise more than 500%. However, the meteoric rise was followed by uncertainty in its user community due to certain decisions by the developer team.
The game's token, known as PVU (initials for Plant vs Undead), peaked at $ 24, with players earning more than $ 500 a month, Cointelegraph reported.
However, following the success of the game, the developers took no action to improve the game, causing the PVU to lose almost 90% of its value, dropping to less than $ 3.
The game ended up being the victim of its own success, according to analysts, since in less than 30 days after its launch Plant vs Undead already accumulated more than 2 million players. But the high demand was not followed by an increase in server infrastructure, leading to slowdowns and sometimes crashing of the game.
To try to solve it, those responsible for the game decided in mid-August to put in turns. With a total of 8 turns, players could enter the game based on their turn for 30 minutes, with a 4 hour wait time between turns.
However, the "queue" to enter the game was not well seen by the community and the game was losing users and now, although the time restriction has been removed, this has not been enough to recover users.
The rules of the game have changed
PVU is the native token of the platform, but within the game players use another asset called LE, which, unlike the SLP that is paid in Axie Infinity, this LE cannot be withdrawn from the game and does not have a value in the secondary market , so it can only be exchanged for in-game PVUs at a rate controlled by the game developers.
Initially each 105 LE was equivalent to 1 PVU, however, shortly after the rate increased by 10% per week and, to increase the controversy, the developers decided to change the conversion rate to stay at 500 LE for 1 PVU, in addition to maintaining the 10% weekly increase, thus drastically reducing the profitability of the game.
But the decision most criticized by the community was the division of the farm and battle modes and the requirement of a plant (in the game's NFT) to be able to exchange LE for PVU.
Originally, the game allowed players to generate NFTs (the plants necessary for the game) and use them in PvP (player versus player) battles and thus earn LEs that could be exchanged for PVU and generate profitability.
However, with the game on the rise, the developers of Plant vs Undead changed the rules of the game, separating the farm mode and the PvP mode into two different networks.
So now, it is no longer possible to use the plants generated in the cultivation mode to fight in the PVP mode and not even the PVUs also generated in the farm mode can be used in the battle mode. Since in addition to different networks, developers have adopted different blockchains for each mode.
"This decision was totally unexpected and sudden, since the existence of 2 parallel games at the beginning of Plant vs Undead or in its original White Paper was never announced", highlights the journalist Miguel Arroyo.
Another decision that generated alerts in the Plant vs Undead community of players was the constant withdrawal of PVU by the development team from the game treasury.
These constant failures and "last minute" decisions ended up taking away an important part of the credibility of the game and also made PVU not only plummet but also made it very difficult for it to recover its value, which is trading at $ 3.
