Creeator League, a new eSports venture associated with MrBeast of Youtube fame, received a ton of flak for offering special community passes as NFTs! Well, as it turns out, they actually aren’t NFTs, though they do utilize blockchain technology.
The Creator’s League is a group of eight eSports teams, each lead by a social media content creator. The idea is that these teams will be partially run by the community through a Pass system. Those who own a Pass for a team can vote on various team decisions, and also has an opportunity to earn a spot for themselves on the team!
Creator League Passes
These Passes offer perks that those familiar with purchasing founder type NFTs will recognize — exclusive tournaments, special Discord channels, voting powers, and even the opportunity to join the team! Players choose a specific Creator when purchasing a pass. Each person may only hold Passes for one team, though they can hold multiple Passes for extra votes. Passes cost $19.99, payable with a fiat or fiat-adjacent payment option, not with cryptocurrency.
There was some initial excitement about Creator League, especially with the association with MrBeast. However, that excitement quickly turned sour when it was discovered that these Passes may actually be NFTs! As it turns out, they aren’t. Though they do use the NEAR blockchain for transparency purposes. But the knee-jerk reactions to the word NFT had already reverberated through the Internet, with one of the Creator captains even deciding to pull themselves from the project entirely!
Despite the Passes being a great use case for NFTs, Creator League pointed out that these Passes are not really NFTs. Rather they are just digital items that cannot be traded or sold to others. It’s unclear if the Passes are actually a type of soulbound NFT, or if they just reside on a company server somewhere.
Creator League Tournament
Creator League is planning to kick things off with a bang, starting with an open tournament with a $50k prize pool! This first event will be a 3v3, zero build, Fortnite competition. The player with the most points for each team not only wins a cash prize, but they are also automatically put on their Creator’s team!
Both the sale and tournament have been put on temporary hold and Creators League is offering refunds to those who view blockchain technology as a devil-cursed spawn of Satan. Keep on eye on the Creator League social media channels for updates about the sale and tournament.
The Horror of NFTs
The Creators League is actually a cool idea. And its concepts of public ownership and community engagement mesh with what we see in blockchain gaming. It’s unfortunate that they weren’t willing to go the extra step and make these Passes actual, transferable NFTs. The inability to trade Passes really limits the potential here. It’s also unfortunate that they received such heavy backlash at just the mere mention of NFTs!
The visceral reaction to the discovery that these digital items might be NFTs was kind of crazy. But it highlights how far there is to go in educating the general public on NFTs and blockchain in general.
To learn more about Creator League, visit their Twitter page.
