Rebellion: Splinterlands Is Still Alive!

There has been much talk about the "death" of Splinterlands

At least if you are on social media other than Hive. I guess that is to be expected with a decreasing player base and falling token prices. But then again, has any other game done a better job in the bear market? From what I have heard games like AXIE Infinity had pretty much the same problems (although I haven't followed development there). Token prices are down and people FUD hard and quit. That's totally normal and happens in every bear cycle. But is everything going to crash soon for Splinterlands?

While the layoffs from the company and the split off into two separate ones took everyone by surprise, I think that was mainly a reaction to a massively oversized company expansion during the bull market (and false expectations that the success would just continue) as well as bad/short sighted decisions. With @aggroed at the helm it always felt like there was hype and that the bull was around the corner; but on hindsight this was the false "spirit". We needed a check with reality and I think @yabapmatt is just the right one to do it. We are already seeing good and more long sighted decisions from the team and if anything, the focus is now much more heightened and the priorities are sorted out. We needed REBELLION to fund the company (I am still a bit shocked just how dire things were as regards to the company's liquidity situation) and we need LAND 1.5 to get the economy back on track again. Together with SOULKEEP we should also attract new players which has to be one of the top goals for a successful game.

Rebellion pre-sale has been a success!

I am pretty sure that the team yesterday was just as nervous as the community as a whole about the REBELLION pre-sale launch event. After it was laid open that the company was in dire need of funding/cash REBELLION has had to have been a success, otherwise the future of Splinterlands was actually anything but clear. Since yesterday we are now closing in on 250k packs sold. That has been Matt's conservative goal and I think can be deemed a successful sale event. The company has now enough funding for at least the mid-term future, but I think just as important it has shown that Splinterlands is still alive! There are obviously still many players here and there is enough demand to sustain the economy as a whole it would seem.

Timeline

The coming months are going to be just as important:

LAND 1.5 in November (that is basically the confirmed month of release)
REBELLION main sale in December
SOULKEEP in Q1 (?)

There are of course many smaller things coming as well (e.g. card burning event), but these 3 things are the mist important pieces for the continued success of SPL.

SPS/DEC

DEC is now basically back at peg. This hasn't lasted long in the past, but with almost 1B DEC burned/sold for REBELLION already and LAND 1.5 probably consuming around 2B DEC, there will perhaps only be around 1B left on the market in December/January, which should be enough to keep it at peg. Of course as soon as DEC "runs out", this will start the flywheel since players will have to burn SPS to get DEC.

SPS itself seems to be at rock bottom now. At 1.3 cents and a 99+% fall from its ATH, I wouldn't be surprised if price slowly but consistently pushes back up again. There is still around 1M SPS inflation per day (which is way too high imo), but with the inflation reducing every month and SPS getting more utility (Soulkeep etc.) as well as being burned it should even out things again.