Storybook Brawl is a free card game with a little niche of its own. It launched on Steam in June last year and while it wasn’t a huge hit, SteamDB said it has reached an all-time high of over 2700 concurrent players – which is normal for a game of this size. The relatively small player base also seemed quite happy with the game, with mostly positive reviews. But that was five days ago. Now if you go to the Storybook Brawl Steam page, the reviews are overwhelmingly negative.
That’s thanks to an announcement from developer Good Luck Games. As spotted by Eurogamer, on March 22 the developer announced that it was acquired by FTX US, a cryptocurrency exchange launched in 2019. And as new owners, FTX wants to – you guessed it – integrate blockchain technology into the game.
“We couldn’t stop playing Storybook Brawl when it became available in Early Access on Steam last summer,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX. “Besides being an incredibly enjoyable game that our entire office enjoys, with its highly engaging gameplay and free-to-play model, we saw an opportunity to be the vanguard of ethical gaming and crypto transaction integration at one.” To be wise like never before. It hasn’t happened in this room before.”
The announcement went on to stress that this integration will be “ethical” and they will ensure that “fun comes first”.
Unfortunately for the developers, fans didn’t see it that way. The reactionary review bombing is proof enough that gamers don’t want this integration. Additionally, Steam does not allow blockchain games on the platform, leaving many current players confused as to where the game is going and what will happen with their progress.
At the time of writing, only 17 percent of Storybook Brawl’s 555 reviews over the past month are positive. Undoubtedly, these negative reviews came after the developer’s announcement, meaning the game went from mostly positive to overwhelmingly negative in just about five days.
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