Catizen’s path to its upcoming token launch on September 20 has been rocky, with players complaining about a previous delay and other moves. But now some players are up in arms again after the airdrop allocations were revealed, with developer Pluto Studio admitting to criteria changes that weren’t disclosed ahead of time.

Pluto revealed to players Saturday how many tokens they are set to receive when the Telegram game’s CATI token launches on The Open Network. The token isn’t yet live and players don’t know how much each token will be worth when it hits the market on September 20.

However, many players have expressed disappointment on Twitter (aka X) that their share of rewards was lower than expected. CATI will have a total supply of 1 billion tokens, with 305 million tokens circulating at launch—and some players who say they were grinding hard in the Telegram puzzle game thought they’d get a larger share of the pie.

“Rank 6,054 out of 36 million players but got only 39 CATI,” one player claimed. “How can someone call this fair distribution? We need transparency about the token allocation.”

Other players similarly complained of single-digit or double-digital CATI allocations in viral tweets, despite claiming to have played extensive amounts of the game. Quickly, the hashtag “#catizenscam” began trending across Twitter.

But the complaints aren’t only focused on the number of tokens allocated to players. They also came following changes to the token distribution model and allocation criteria that were not previously communicated.

Pluto had previously announced that 43% of the token supply would be given to the community—but Friday’s announcement that only about 30% of the supply would be circulating at launch raised plenty of questions among players.

Over the weekend, the developers clarified that 43% of the supply will be allocated to “airdrop and ecosystem,” but that the total includes the 90 million tokens (9% of total supply) being offered to Binance customers who stake coins via a Launchpool rewards campaign. That promotion was just announced on Friday.

Just 15% of the total supply (or 150 million tokens) will be used for the initial airdrop to players, with more granted as play-to-earn rewards in quarterly in-game seasons.

There’s a further change drawing scorn from some players. Previously, Catizen’s team said that players’ in-game vKitty earning rate—which is boosted by playing the cat-matching puzzle game—would be the primary determinant in airdrop allocations.

But early Sunday, after the airdrop allocations had been revealed to players, Pluto said that it had actually changed the design of the airdrop after discovering that some players had used means to artificially boost their earnings.

“During the data review for this CATI airdrop, we discovered that numerous bot accounts exploited this public rule by using scripts to boost their vKitty profit speed, attempting to gain a disproportionate amount of CATI tokens,” it wrote. “In this situation, following the original airdrop criterion would significantly undermine the benefits of genuine players and community supporters!”

As such, the airdrop criteria was shifted to minimize the vKitty profit speed, and instead focus on “factors that more accurately reflect genuine player activities, such as: on-chain interactions, task completions, and fish coin purchases and consumption.”

Because some of those criteria are based around spending money in the game—and Pluto had recently boasted of earning some $27 million from paying players—used unhappy with their airdrop allocations complained that Catizens team had executed a bait-and-switch at the expense of those who had invested time rather than money.

Decrypt reached out to Pluto Studio for comment on the complaints and changes, including why it did not instead ban players who had cheated rather than alter the criteria for all users—but did not receive an immediate response.

Mech shooter MetalCore is set to enter open beta on the Epic Games Store on September 12 with its first in-game season of content, “MetalPunk Rhapsody.” This milestone will see the Ethereum-based game, which is built on layer-2 scaling network Immutable zkEVM, upgraded to Unreal Engine 5 with a handful of new features added.

The shooter, which gave off a Titanfall-meets-Destiny vibe when we first played a preview build last year, has spent the last six months in various closed beta phases. Studio369, the developer behind the game, is now opening its doors for anyone to test the game out.

Alongside the open beta launch, the Ethereum shooter has upgraded to Unreal Engine 5, the latest version a powerful game engine that is widely used across the industry, including by some of the largest AAA studios. Previously running on Unreal Engine 4, MetalCore will reportedly run smoother thanks to the jump to the latest version.

MetalPunk Rhapsody will introduce the game’s new season format, with each expected to last about four weeks. In turn, seasonal rewards will be granted to players with limited-time prizes for those who climb the ranks.

In an attempt to bring MetalCore’s lore to the forefront of player’s experience, each season plans to focus on a different faction within the game’s universe. In the first season, the MetalPunk faction will be spotlighted through themed content, skins, and storylines. 

As for new in-game features, players will be able to try out new player-vs-environment (PvE) raids where up to 10 players from the same faction join forces to take down a deadly alien species to secure resources. This new game mode aims to test players’ teamwork within their factions.

Also, vehicles and mechs will benefit from new rarity and strength variables, while the game’s mission system has also received what the team describes as a “significant update.” Introductory missions have been improved for first-time players alongside fresh content for those who have already been playing MetalCore.

The open beta move comes after MetalCore’s native token MCG launched in June alongside a previous closed beta test. Players needed an Epic Games Store key or had to purchase one of five levels of Founders Packs in order to play the closed beta. But for the open beta starting September 12, anyone can download the game and hop in.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

X Empire airdrop details: Rising Telegram game X Empire, formerly known as Musk Empire, revealed that its “mining phase” will end September 30 and gave details on how the airdrop will be allocated. Any in-game progression after the mining phase ends will not be considered when it comes to the airdrop. The ending of this phase will be one of the final major steps towards the airdrop.

Three criteria were later detailed for players to consider. Primarily, players must have a TON wallet connected to the game—otherwise there will be nowhere for tokens to be airdropped to. The post also highlights that in-game profit-per-hour is a key metric that the game is using for airdrop allocation. Finally, inviting friends has been a key gameplay mechanic and will be considered in the airdrop, especially if you onboarded “quality” players of the game. It’s not yet clear how “quality” will be judged.

Citizen token launch date: Catizen, a Telegram-based puzzle game, announced that its token will launch on September 20 following a delay that pushed its CATI token—which will be minted on The Open Network (TON)—out from its original July target.

On Thursday, crypto exchange Bybit posted that it will list CATI for spot trading on September 20. Catizen shared the news through its official channels, as well, confirming the date in the process. Airdrop timing has yet to be confirmed, but its likely to happen alongside the token generation event.

SuiPlay0x1 specs revealed: More details about the upcoming crypto gaming handheld console SuiPlay0x1 were revealed on Tuesday by Playtron alongside Mysten Labs, the core team behind the Sui blockchain. Pre-orders for the device have also opened, with the first 1,000 buyers receiving a soulbound NFT reward with future perks teased.

The crypto gaming device is currently priced at $599 plus shipping and tax. It has been confirmed that the SuiPlay0x1 will come with 512GB of SSD storage, packed with an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U CPU and AMD Ryzen 780M graphics card. Pair that with a 1,920×1,200 7-inch LCD screen and the Linux-based operating system Playtron, and it’s poised to be a unique challenger to Valve’s Steam Deck..

ICYMI

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

Edited by Andrew Hayward