First introduced in September 2021, on the peak of the world’s collective NFT insanity, Northern Guilds was speculated to be “a fun-first, device-agnostic dungeon crawler blockchain MMORPG impressed by your favourite childhood video games”. It might shock you, reader, to search out out that Northern Guilds has ended up being none of these issues.
As first reported by Martijn van Wezel, a member of the Northern Guilds improvement group has posted a prolonged replace on the venture’s Discord, telling anybody trying ahead to the sport that it was lifeless, that Pixie Interactive (the corporate behind it) was lifeless and claiming that all the pieces had turned to shit as a result of the management group had blown by way of all their cash on all the pieces from crypto investments to “extreme enterprise journey”.
Calling the previous few months “a nightmare, a tragedy, a dumpster fireplace”, the previous worker says that whereas it had initially been claimed that the sport “had simply secured sufficient funding a number of months previous to get us by way of 1.5-2 years of improvement”, Pixie’s administration group consisting of CEO Thomas Konig and CTO Wesley Peeters had continually been busy attempting to safe extra cash, together with assembly with “Russian nationals”.
It’s additionally alleged that the pair “began (with out the remainder of the group realizing) one other venture ‘NFTVault’”, which “shortly failed” but in addition “shifted their consideration away from Pixie for some time”, resulting in a interval “when our higher administration and management local weather began to alter and all of us felt it”.
The worker additionally accuses Konig and Peeters of spending the corporate’s tax cash on a crypto funding—which tanked—and that this fashioned a part of an $800,000 tax invoice which couldn’t be paid, and which finally introduced in regards to the studio’s chapter. In an announcement issued to Kotaku, Konig denies this, saying “Tax cash was not used to put money into crypto, to my data. I by no means had entry to the corporate financials”.
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Different allegations made within the publish embody:
Tom began utterly disappearing on and off in January and February. Our CEO was unable to guide the group, fulfill any deadlines, and successfully talk or present up for conferences. It bought increasingly more frequent to the purpose that come Might, the group hardly heard from him in any respect and we misplaced weeks of labor and momentum attempting to deal with the scenario and reorganize roles, tasks, and extra…
Tom deserted Wesley all through nearly all of the fundraising, chapter, communication, and management course of. Stringing everybody together with guarantees that completed work and updates would come quickly. Leaving the mess for Wesley (and the group) to scrub up behind him. They’re each liable for what has occurred. Sadly to this point Tom has taken completely no possession of this example and is avoiding the entire penalties that Wesley is dealing with. Wesley has been the one one among our founders trying to assist and assist the staff by way of this. He has owned as much as what has occurred.
The builders now say they’re attempting to salvage the surely-worthless IP and its property to allow them to get one thing for the work they’ve completed over the previous 12 months, and have additionally begun work on a smaller-scale sports activities recreation based mostly loosely on the identical Viking premise.
Whereas the assertion was posted by the account of a single former developer, group supervisor Lynsey Christensen, it was additionally co-signed by numerous them, together with “Adam, Rachel, Miha, Dave, Bruno, Rayan, Brendon, Hunter, Walter, Alex, and Wesley”. The one Wesley on the event group is Peeters.
Whereas denying the crypto and tax allegations, Konig tells Kotaku that he locations the blame for the studio’s demise on his hiring of too many builders at too nice a value:
A lot less complicated, however no much less heartbreaking and difficult on everybody concerned, and nonetheless utterly our fault, $2.5M earlier than Dutch taxes doesn’t an MMORPG make once you scale your organization to twenty+ individuals in below a 12 months on a European wage construction proper earlier than a monetary downturn.
And add to that we employed internationally, so we paid massive charges to payroll firms as well as.
That’s earlier than accountants, attorneys (with experience in crypto and with crypto being a legally robust subject), licensing, advertising and marketing, journey bills, overhead, the listing goes on.
I’ve reached out to Peeters as properly—who the publish claims “can be now personally bankrupt too and over a decade of paying again what’s owed to his authorities”—and can replace if I hear again from him. And please don’t confuse this story with the different one about an NFT recreation and crypto investments going dangerous, that was a totally different recreation.