Pixelmon Disaster: Invisible NFTs, Ridiculous Bad Designs

Pixelmon promised to be an intriguing NFT project and a long-awaited reboot of the Minecraft mod and fun server that closed a few years ago. Unfortunately, the NFT sale and reveal turned into a disaster that invited both outrage and ridicule on social media. 

Pixelmon promised a preview of bright, detailed characters from the Pokemon universe, adapted to a Minecraft experience. Instead, a user reported getting an NFT that failed to materialize in any recognizable form. 

i promised myself. If a Hape Happens to me ever again!! Im quitting NFT's!! Thanks @Pixelmon I got an invisible Character!! Worst mint of my life!! Atleast give me a character!!! #NFT !! i cant even giveaway this. unless this is the Phase two of Land sale and i got confused! pic.twitter.com/vvAV5uVVZU

— ichigo90LQ (@quewalker90) February 25, 2022

Pixelmon got exposure for its failure, as it achieved a notable amount of sales over the weekend. 

https://twitter.com/SalesBotNFT/status/1497360713488093184

Despite the high-profile expected mint and a starting price of 2.7 ETH at a Dutch falling price auction, the actual image reveal did not go smooth. Pixelmon promised 7,750 characters and only brought a partially finished collection. 

Pixelmon: Successful Mint, Bad Artwork

The Pixelmon mint turned out to be successful, with some items selling at $10,000 during the event. Overall, Pixelmon reported total funds raised at $70M, a phenomenal sum for a game item mint. However, the team was not actually ready with the art. 

"we have pledged $2,000,000 of the $70,000,000 you gave us to…. hire an agency to replace these shit NFTs we sold you with better ones"

how is this real pic.twitter.com/iDpWbcflYj

— Cobie (@cobie) February 26, 2022

And whatever art was produced, caused more shock even than the invisible NFTs. 

$70 MILLION LOOOOOOOOL pic.twitter.com/GAcfAuMlsS

— Cobie (@cobie) February 26, 2022

Pixelmon Generation 1 was actually present on OpenSea, with a floor price down to 0.35 ETH. Some of the images had a better quality preview, but others had nothing to do with the proposed type of art.

AHAHA I'M DYING ! @Pixelmon WTF ? pic.twitter.com/z94thtcgrh

— LaGuez.eth (@_LaGuez) February 26, 2022

Fortunately, Pixelmon has not disappeared from social media, and has responded to criticisms about the big personal losses. Due to social media hype, some buyers managed to buy items for as much as 7 to 17 ETH. 

The project has not mentioned anything about returning the funds, or why the preview art had nothing to do with the actual visualization of characters within the game. It also turned out Pixelmon used freelancers and not an in-house art team, now promising to find a way to re-create all promised characters for the buyers of the Generation 1 collection.