I have seen quite a few posts promoting Axie Infinity on hive.blog lately. While it's great that these posts are getting more people to know about a nice chance to get some income in these uncertain times and showing new players how to start with gameplay, there are quite a few controversial areas of Axie Infinity that have yet to be mentioned.

I got to know about this game from a post on reddit and have been playing it for a while now, and my experience has been mostly negative, both with gameplay and the community. This game does yield high income, but it comes with a high cost. And I'm going to explain my points in this posts. But before that, let's talk about what you get from playing Axie Infinity.

Earnings

By playing this game, you are rewarded with the in-game token Smooth Love Potion or SLP (formerly, Small Love Potion, and somehow I always read the abbreviation as Shitty Life Protip).

This token is quite valuable actually, it had been hovering between $0.13 to $0.18 for months until a few days back when it shot past $0.3 and now is sitting at $0.35, leaving the shilled Dogecoin far behind.

Now this is great news for players and is the reason for the influx of players to this game. Since the token is growing too high and too fast, however, I can't help but being sceptic about the stability of SLP. In addition, more players may be great for the game and those behind it, but not the current players, and I'm going to tell you why later.

Now you can earn at least 150 SLP a day, with 100 from playing PvE and 50 from the daily reward. If you can beat other players in PvP while still have energy (this game implements energy system. You can play without energy, but you won't earn SLP), you can get more. An average player can, in reality get around 200 to 250 SLP a day. That is around $60 to $80 a day "just" by playing this game. Too good to be true eh? But it is true, at least for the time being, and I can vouch for that, but of course, there are more to it and let's get to the dark side of Axie infinity.

Mediocre Gameplay

Now I won't say much about this because most people don't come to this game for gameplay and most play-to-earn blockchains games don't boast great gameplay either, but it's still worth mentioning since you are going to spend a lot of your time with this game if you want to earn SLP.

This game implements a turn-based battle system where monsters called axies fight each other. And so far, there is only so much an axie can do in a fight. This game gets repetitive quite quickly considering how much and how often you have to play for it to pay off. And of course, there is thrill in battling other players but no body wants to get thrilled if winning or losing amounts to gain or loss of potential money.

PvE Battles

PvE Map

PvP Endgame

Initial Investments

This is the greatest obstacle to new players to this game. With more people knowing axies to form a team. And these are the lowest prices on the market right now.

Absurdly high, right? It would cost you more than $1000 to start playing a game that can earn you $1800 to $2400 a month. It sounds like a fair investment to me actually, and I have no issues with this. And these prices are somewhat anomalies to me because normally you only need around $600 to start. However, it was two months ago, and at that time with that much money, you could only got a basic team which couldn't win much in PvP and you would have a hard time earning 150 SLP a day.

With these kinds of prices, you would expect this game to not have a large player base. But it does, and that leads to my first real problem with Axie Infinity.

Pathetic Player Base

Using "pathetic" may be a bit offensive, but I'm being offensive here because that was how I felt, offended, coming in contact with the community. Because of the high initial cost, people are borrowing axies from other players so they can start earning. It started off as an act of kindness and of goodwill on the part of the lenders from a budding community I guess, and I have no problem with that. But now, it is a mess. Those who were fortunate enough to play the game when axie costs were around a few dollars or whales who have enough money to purchase a ton of axies are now lending them out like they are giving people salvation. They dubbed their lending practice "scholarship", and people must fill out a form of application to get a slim chance of being a "scholar", as if they are looking for jobs. Of course, there are more applicants than scholarships to give out, and their Telegram and Discord channels are flooded with application forms and begging messages. There is a channel on Discord devoted to lending and borrowing programs but desperate people spam their applications anywhere they can, annoying other users. And worse, they are giving out their personal information to strangers, exposing themselves to harms.

This is a screenshot from one of the biggest Axie Telegram channels. You can see for yourself a typical application form borrowers are asked to filled out, and this person has been naive enough to expose themself to everyone. It is bad enough normally, but this is on the internet and in crypto space, unspeakable harms come from such action. Most of the time, messages like this are promptly ignored, but they may invite some negative reactions from other users and bans from mods.

And then, there are people who are dubbed "scholarship managers". Most of them are simple people who have some money to spare and little time to play for themselves, and so they hire others to play for them. But also there are whales who are just hoarding axies, making the prices unaffordable for new players and then giving out axies as "scholarships" as if they are doing others a favor. Of course new comer can but accept their offers with great gratitude.

And that annoyed me greatly. Axie Infinity prides themselves on providing "economic freedom for players" and "giving means of productions to workers", but apparently, only who are lucky or have enough money can afford such freedom, and the fact that players who don't have enough money having no choice but to work for the whales who have more axies than they can ever used is the exact opposite of workers owing means of production. Mind you, that's how capitalism works in real life. We work for corporates only because they own the means of production. This model also spawns another problems for independent players. They cannot afford nice enough axies to win in PvP against borrowed axies, and what choice do they have besides to become borrowers themselves. And that is another parallelism between this game dynamic and real world.

People are not even discreet about admitting Axie Infinity is no more of a game than a job, accusing people of being lazy, not providing a proper CV for "scholarships" or not playing (read working enough to make money for them). And that just disgusts me. Aren't blockchains and blockchain games are the way to financial freedom? Why are these people are engaging in centralized behaviors? And mind you, Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity endorses this. What they can't tolerate is, small time, independent players buying enough axies to play on multiple accounts and earn extra.

Whales also boast about their kindness on social media and about how they have helped others to earn money in the time of needs, all the while trying to promote themselves by giving out freebie in exchange for likes and retweets, and compliments. Most of these people are working closely with Axie Infinity as some sort of community spokesmen.

Unstable Servers and Shady Behaviors from Sky Mavis

Remember how I said you could earn at least 150 SLP a days? You can't always do that. With waves of new players, the game has become unplayable lately. You are lucky if you can finish battle, let alone completing the required number of fights for the basic 150 SLP. And if you somehow manage to do that, it would take a lot of time of your day. And then, when you pay hundreds of dollars, you expect to earn back the money with profit right? You invest into this game, and yet the server problems are causing you to lose money while Sky Mavis keeps promising about sever upgrade, and provides compensation.

Now when you complain about the issues, you are met with scorns from both mods and others players. According to them, you should feel grateful for having an opportunity to play this game and earn, because where else you can you earn so much money just buy playing? Mind you, there are tons of blockchain play-to-earn right now. True, they are not as much yielding as Axie Infinity, but they don't cost as much as this game and player don't encounter much technical issues and surely not contempt when they raise a problem.

"So you are welcome to go play those game," is but an common remark from these people. First, they know too well that now that hooked and having paid ton of money, there is no way for them to quit now no matter how bad their experience is or how time consuming the game is. Second, such behaviors from a community, especially from the game representative is unacceptable. Either they don't care about players' experience or they know that they have the high ground and can have their way.

When you do have the gall to mention compensation for your loss of time and earning, you are met with comments such as this, from players and from community spokesmen on Discord.

Surely, no body forces you to play this game, and no body forces you to pays thousands of dollars for animated pieces of pixels either. However, promoting nonstop about how great and rewarding this game is while conveniently not mentioning what comes with it is intentionally misleading. And shifting the blame on the victims is just disrespectful and criminal. And that's just for complaining about the company's lack of responsibility.

Sky Mavis and their spokesmen keep boasting how their game is number one in terms of volume and players, and how they have ton of new players every day and how you are welcome to join them in the great journey to a brighter future. But it seems, once you actually buy axies, you are left to your devices and deal with problems on your own. In addition, there is no ticket system for supporting players.

The company is not much different from their representatives. In June, they shut down, the daily reward that allows player to earn the 50 SLP quota without warning, because they needed to do some upgrade to the server. This caused a ruckus which promptly shut off by shrills. They only put up an public announcement after players noticed that they were missing some precious earning they were promised. The daily reward were back after a week or so, a few days after a quite celebrated announcement for its return. Mind you, they didn't announce naught when they pulled it down.

Their explanations? They are burdened with the task of "changing the world". There are so much they need to do to ensure the future of Axie Infinity, such as attracting more players, so existing players must wait while the great people at Sky Mavis doing their god bidding jobs.

And then this company who is so adamant about banning players who apparently violate the ToS by playing multiple accounts seems to have no problem with ToS being violated if they benefit from it.

Here is an extract from their public announcement regarding the issues with the 1000000th axie, an highly sought and valuable asset in game. Apparently, a player used a third-party script to get this axie and other were unhappy about this. You can read the whole text here

First they claimed there was a "lack of clarity" on their part. If the ToS is unclear, how is it supposed to be enforced in the first place, and how is it not the company fault? And then they proceeded to state that "while our ToS said that automation was not allowed, we were clearly". What does it have to do with the ToS being unclear if they are saying it is actually clear? Either this is a case of poor writing or they are being shady with words here.

But more importantly, in this announcement, they clearly admit that they won't give two hoots about their own policy if the act of violation benefits the "community" and has since updated their obscure policy to conveniently reflect their decisions.

Conclusion

While this game sports a great chance of earnings, it costs much. Gameplay is average and the lagging is immense which may compromise your income. The community is best staying away from and don't expect much support from developers.

If you have money to invest and don't give two hoots about bullshit then this game is worthwhile. Otherwise, there are other great play-to-earn opportunities to consider.