So you guys remember Kritika Online, right? It was published here by En Masse but shut down back in 2019, although it continued running in Korea. Then we learned about Kritika:REBOOT, which returned a few months later under the ALLM banner – that was the original developer. That version of the game also closed down in the west back in February of this year. And that was the end of Kritika and nobody ever tried to Hellgate it back again.
Just kidding. As first noticed by MMO Fallout, ALLM is bringing the game back again under the COM2US publishing banner, this time as a crypto-encrusted title called Kritika Global.
The developers have posted a whitepaper (red flag!) for the project, telling gamers that the new version will “help players break free” from the situation of paying for a product and then enjoying that product, “allowing them to gain rewards for their hard work, but also to freely purchase items with the currencies they earned maintaining their asset values” through their “tokenomics” system.
The game is planned to launch June 8th, with a content roadmap running through the end of 2022 promising new systems, characters, and a level bump. The whitepaper specifically notes the game’s nine years of content and former 20M players as markers of stability that will purportedly make it more competitive in the blockchain game arena.
We note here that South Korea has effectively banned NFT-driven games locally, citing gambling addiction, but South Korean game companies seem to have no compunctions about trying to take advantage of players in countries that have thus far done little to stop the scamming.
Perfect Ten: MMOs that have fallen to the dark side of cryptocurrency
Lawful Neutral: How is an NFT MMO even supposed to work?
Vague Patch Notes: NFTs in gaming are a bad, dumb idea
Vague Patch Notes: Why play-to-earn is a garbage idea
Vague Patch Notes: The metaverse doesn’t exist and isn’t a good idea either
GDC 2022: Control, revenue, scarcity, ethics, and the human challenges of the gaming ‘metaverse’
Vague Patch Notes: No, Little Orbit has not solved the MMO blockchain problem
You know, when MMO gamers said they wanted old games preserved and revived, this is not what they meant. Sometimes we’d just like to remember them as they were and not see them revived into cash-grabby shambling horrors that will tarnish their memory forever.
