Today was quite the day in the world of Splinterlands
It was announced early this morning that the company had laid off about 45% of it's staff. As soon as the news started to break, the rumors where rampant and the questions started
For me personally, this was a cause for concern but decided to wait until their impromptu Town Hall that took place at 6pm eastern. I figured a lot of the concerns we all had as investors and players of the game, would be addressed.
After listening to the entire talk, and from a number of questions from the community, I'm still...A little concerned.
I'm not sure exactly how we got to this spot as everything seemed to be working out, with the big sales that were happening, all the attention and passion from the community.
But what it came down to for me was two factors..
The bear market as a whole and the over confidence of the game itself.
The bear market is something I don't think anyone could fault the company for. Obviously, no one reading this or anyone in the Splinterlands community can dictate what the rest of crypto does. But where my concern lays is how Splinterlands became such a powerhouse product in the blockchain gaming space.
You see, this thing was built in the last bear market. So to me, Splinterlands should have been 'bear market proof' but what happened almost 2 years is where I feel things may have gone wrong.
Right when the bull run was on, the Untamed packs in the Splinterlands game were close to being sold out. The 'Play 2 Earn' brand was becoming all the rage thanks to things like Axie Infinity and of course, Splinterlands. It was a perfect storm, card prices on the market were through the roof and Untamed AND Dice sets, were sold out on the site.
And as we anticipated the launch of Chaos Legion, there was a fever pitch for the community to buy new packs and get in on the hype.
Here's what I always think was a problem....Chaos Legion packs were more expensive to buy than Untamed. And there was 15 million of them to be sold...
This sounded great when the bulls were in town and there was huge demand for packs as well as the promised LAND expansion. Not so great during this bear market. So much so that a proposal was put out to actually burn unsold packs of Chaos Legion.
Personally, I didn't have a problem with the price increase. I WANT the company to make money. The issue I always had was that I felt like 15 million packs, doesn't create the same demand as Untamed did with it's 1 million packs. Combine this with Riftwatchers launching, Runi sales, Tower Defence and most recently, Lux Vega....And there was just too much to spend our money on, it felt like something was bound to happen.
Well today it did.
One of the biggest head scratchers for me was the announcement that they had let go of 
Splinterlands was always a community based game, so to get rid of one of the faces of the community...Just seemed odd.
So does this mean I'm exiting the game?
Am I selling it all? Closing up shop?
I'm really in wait and see mode for the time being, mainly because I still believe in Splinterlands the brand and the experience. I love the card ownership. I love the game play. And I'm still very hopeful for the future of not only Land expansion but all the exciting things they have planned.
Granted, the roadmap may be reworked and edited a bit going forward, but generally....Layoffs do happen in business all the time. We're in a 'black swan' event as Aggroed called it on the town hall and generally, since day one, I haven't seen anything that makes me think, Splinterlands doesn't want to become better each and every day.
So....I'm cautious. Maybe the better thing to say is that I'm cautiously optimistic because the company has plenty of good will in my opinion over the past 4 years to see the rough patches through.
But enough of my thoughts.....
What do you think of the announcement today?
Are you still in love with the game?
Or do you feel like this is something that won't be fixed?
I'd love to hear your opinion on the entire situation...
