Creeator League, a new eSports venture associated with YouTube’s MrBeast, has been widely criticized for offering special community passes as NFTs! As it turns out, they are not actually NFTs, although they do use blockchain technology.
The Creator’s League is a group of eight eSports teams, each led by a social media content creator. The idea is that these teams will be partly managed by the community through a Pass system. Those who own a Team Pass will be able to vote on various team decisions and also have the opportunity to earn themselves a spot on the team!
Creator League Passes
These passes offer perks that those familiar with buying Founder-type NFTs will recognize: exclusive tournaments, dedicated Discord channels, voting privileges, and even the opportunity to join the team! Players choose a specific Creator when purchasing a pass. Each person may only have passes for one team, although he or she may have multiple passes for additional votes. Passes cost $19.99, payable with a fiat or fiat-adjacent payment option, not cryptocurrency.
There was some excitement about the Creator League initially, mainly because of its association with MrBeast. However, that excitement quickly turned sour when it was discovered that these passes may be NFTs! It turns out they are not. Although they do use the NEAR blockchain for transparency purposes. But the knee-jerk reactions to the word NFT had already resonated on the internet, with one of the Creator captains even deciding to pull out of the project completely!
Despite the passes being a great use case for NFTs, Creator League pointed out that these passes aren’t really NFTs. Rather, they are simply digital items that cannot be traded or sold to others. It’s unclear if the passes are actually some kind of soul-bound NFT, or if they’re just on a company server somewhere.
Creator League Tournament
The Creator League plans to kick things off with a bang, starting with an open tournament with a $50,000 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 is also automatically placed on their creator’s team!
Both the sale and the tournament are temporarily suspended and so is the Creators League offering refunds for those who view blockchain technology as a devil-cursed offspring of Satan. Keep an eye on the Creator League social media channels for updates on the sale and the tournament.
The horror of NFTs
The Creators League is actually a cool idea. And the concepts of public ownership and community involvement align with what we see in blockchain gaming. It’s a shame they weren’t willing to go the extra mile and turn these passes into real, transferable NFTs. The inability to trade passes really limits the potential here. It’s also a shame they got such a heavy backlash just from the mention of NFTs!
The entrenched reaction to the discovery that these digital items could potentially be NFTs has been quite crazy. But it highlights just how far to go in educating the general public about NFTs and blockchain in general.
For more information about the Creator League, visit their Twitter page.