Axie Infinity, a “play-to-earn” video game in which users receive tokens for playing on the platform and trading characters as NFTs, has seen the value of its tokens decline by more than 90%. Hackers also robbed Axie’s creators of more than $620M in cryptocurrencies.

Why should we care?
How Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity, has responded to its downturn is evidence for how the crypto industry will brush off calls for accountability during this crypto winter. Sky Mavis raised more than $160M in funding from VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm, promising a “revolution” wherein “work and play become one.” Citing games such as Axie Infinity, capitalists like Alexis Ohanian predicted that more than 90% of gaming will adopt a “play-to-earn” model within five years. Since its crash, however, Axie Infinity has quietly amended its mission statement to espouse a “play-and-earn” model, which likens gaming within the platform to a gig-economy job rather than a viable source of income. Sky Mavis Co-Founder Jeffrey Zirlin moralized the pivot as a way to root out players who were in it for material gain instead of pure love for the game. “Sometimes having to flush out the people who are just in it for the money,” he said, “that’s just the system self-correcting.” “This is when you can find true friends in the space,” echoed COO Aleksander Leonard Larsen. The game’s creators responded to thousands of players losing their sole source of income by doubling down on their creation’s promise as “community.” Users might be in dire straits, but at least they’re in it together, these execs claim. Other failing platforms will most certainly try to dodge calls for accountability by deploying this same rhetoric, suggesting the crypto winter will only harden the boundary between the sector’s staunch evangelists and its naysayers.