Game studios choosing to bow out and exit the crypto space is not necessarily a new event on the timeline - however, given the history and context of this specific one, many web3 gaming community members found today's Dimensionals announcement (which some described as long overdue) quite frustrating in particular.

In what was a six-part X thread, IcoBeast.eth shared a detailed breakdown of the latest events surrounding Mino Games, the developers behind the game, Dimensionals which initially started as a web3 RPG (raising $15M in the process) before the team decided to pivot back to traditional gaming - completely removing any trace of them being a web3 game with NFTs in the process in preparation for their Steam marketing activation and launch.

Before diving deeper into the thread, it is worth mentioning that Sasha MacKinnon, co-founder and CEO of the studio shared a long-awaited update about the decision on X, citing industry security issues, financial incentivization and lack of interest in gameplay as some of the reasons behind the company's decision to transition into a "pure web2 title". While several X users shared their best wishes to Sasha and the team, several others expressed their frustration at the lack of accountability and ownership - which IcoBeast further encapsulated in his thread.

For the full Mino Games official announcement from their CEO, refer to the full post on Sasha's account below:

Please note that each section of this piece below has been directly adapted and copied (with permission) from the original thread created by IcoBeast with direct quotations and first-person mentions representing the original post. The full unedited thread can be viewed directly on X below:

"As an initial note, this is not an "attack" or "hit piece" on any person. I didn't even want to write this, but after months of attempting to privately push the team to do the right thing and distribute all the crypto gathered from this endeavour back to holders, it became apparent that it was time just to let the masses decide for themselves what to think." stated IcoBeast as he began a six-part thread.

"This is a story detailing how a company decided to "pivot" into crypto, raise eight figures on equity, promise the world to buyers, holders, and traders, and subsequently renege on all promised utility and ultimately abandon crypto entirely, throwing a few shekels back at a small group of holders and saying 'we did our best'".

IcoBeast then goes on to structure his thread, detailing the following: "Specifically, we're exposing how a team of exceptionally poor operators managed to:

1. Raise (and squander) tens of millions of dollars
2. Drive >3000e (~10m USD) volume on their collection via gigantic promises of utility
   
3. Deliver on NONE of their promises post-mint
   
4. Attempt to fully "exit" web3 by issuing $38,569.64 (14.58e) to compensate a select few holders
   
5. Blame "bear markets" and web3 players who seek profits for the company's poor performance and inability to find PMF (product market fit)
   

Below are many potential lies or unkept promises from the last 18 months. It is up to you to decide if these people are grossly incompetent, malicious, or both." he begins his post. Here is a full breakdown of IcoBeast's points, as highlighted throughout his thread on X.

The Story

Mino Games $15M Raise Announcement via GamesBeat

"The date is February 9, 2023.

Mino Games, led by Sasha MacKinnon, just announced that in the depths of the darkest NFT bear, they raised $15m to build the next great "web3 game" - Dimensionals RPG.

What followed can only truly be understood by NFT WL grinders.

The Dimensionals X account grew from 0 to 200k followers in a couple of weeks.

They regularly pulled thousands of listeners on Spaces and Discord Audio to hear about "the next Pokemon" being built - a genuine fever pitch.

EVERYONE had to have a Dimensionals Genesis Stone - "Dabear" (another X user) recapped why everyone cared a month after mint (screenshot below).

Every holder of a Stone would get airdropped every future character in the game at max level, and you'd be able to sell (or rent) these max-level characters to non-NFT holding players through an in-app marketplace. A true factory asset NFT that keeps producing value for you passively just for owning it." states IcoBeast.

@Dabear_eth X post explaining what are Genesis Stones in Dimensionals

"The mint was, to put it plainly, a gigantic shitshow. Sasha was conned by a whitelist grinder who added many of his own alternate wallets to the whitelist, and the same whitelist grinder was also granted a "Mythic" Stone personally by Sasha, because Sasha was incapable of understanding web3 and the people who reside here.

Nate dumped all the stones for a healthy >$25k profit less than 24 hours later. Honestly, this should have been my red flag to leave immediately. Flash forward to weeks later - the Eve mint was approaching... and it was supposed to be the second tier "factory" NFT that also produced some heroes and gave benefits in the game, but not quite as utility-filled as the Genesis Dimensional Stones. Eve was also supposed to act as the 'entry pass' to play an early version of the game for prizes - The Alpha Trials."

Discord screenshot from Dimensionals' Staking announcement

"The problem? Sasha and the team couldn't ever hit their promised deadlines. Sasha himself would disappear for weeks at a time (calling in occasionally from exotic locations such as Costa Rica or the Italian Coast), leaving his team behind with 0 answers and no knowledge of how to manage a community. Eventually, he'd show back up, and barely any progress would have been made [except] "The GREATEST WEB3 GAMING COLLABORATION OF ALL TIME" - the marketing machine must churn." IcoBeast continues.

Promises Abandoned and Goalposts Moved

"Dimensionals promised TONS of Eve whitelists to non-stone holders and even announced "the greatest collab in web3 gaming" the hype cycle was re-engaged in full force! ...but that Eve mint never happened.

Mid-summer 2023, Stone holders could stake their Stones (custodially) for 30 days, and then they could claim Eves (mint) along with their Stones. But none of the other >1,000 Eves were ever minted.

This sort of staking mechanism is common and even useful for helping teams get a bit of time runway to finish up an MVP for the assets to be used in their game or product. The problem here was that the "Alpha Trials" weren't ready.

Despite having been set on a timeline for months, they weren't close to prepared, and it was unclear why anyone would even want an Eve (or a Stone). Predictably, Stone prices tanked hard as holders finished their staking periods, and Eves were never worth anything. Don't believe anyone who says it was due to a 'bear market' - it was due to total incompetence and constantly missing promised deadlines." shared IcoBeast.

Dimensionals x Overworld partnership announcement post on X

IcoBeast continues: "So that's when the team rolled out Mino Points - an attempt to buy more time and get people to keep holding their assets (or purchase Dimensionals assets). Consumers were told that every day they held Eves or Stones, they'd earn "Mino Points" that would enable them to purchase NFT heroes going forward, merchandise, cosmetics, etc. Clear pivot away from the "you get every hero airdropped to you for holding these Stones".

This change was met with heavy scepticism from the community, who were, at this point, understandably tired of getting slowly and walking back on everything with basically no deliverables. The unrest continued for weeks and months, and Dimensionals finally launched The Alpha Trials, a massive flop.

Barely 50 people wanted to playtest the game as previously, it had been broadcast as a lucrative test/play-to-earn campaign, but asset prices had sunk so low that barely anyone cared anymore. They had delayed far too long."

Screenshot from the Mino Points explainer on their website

The Secret Pivot and Great Scrubbing

"The wheels were falling off. Rather than admit that they fucked up in a spectacular fashion, Sasha and the team decided to blame the "bear market" for poor NFT performance. They made the astute observation that the "web3 audience is financially incentivized" in their end-of-2023 investor update letter.

They were officially "pivoting" away from crypto. Read below—they had no idea what they were doing or how this space works, yet raised over 8 figures to "build" here. I don't have the exact date it was issued, but the language indicates very early 2024. That date will matter shortly.

Keep in mind, this was not shared with holders—just equity investors." IcoBeast continues.

Screenshot from the Mino Games investor report - allegedly H2 2023, although date is not confirmed

"In late December, Sasha told me and a few others that he was re-energized, and that he was going to be super active in Discord and that comms would improve in the new year (2024). He did not follow through. I would give screenshots of the number of messages posted by Sasha for 2024, but they wiped the entire Discord, and that's one of the few things I couldn't capture before it got obliterated.

Sasha continued radio silence until March 2024 when holders began to get mutinous. At this point the NFTs were unsellable from lack of any offers, and there was no apparent reason to believe anything was happening aside from sporadic patches to the semi-functional alpha build communicated occasionally in Discord.

A few astute holders noticed that a new Dimensionals Discord had popped up, and there were Q&As in that Discord indicating that Dimensionals was not a crypto-related game and would never use NFTs. That was, quite frankly, shocking for holders who had been holding now for over a year expecting the promised utilities. And that's when things started disappearing. First, the staking and Mino Points checking website disappeared... never to return. 

Then Sasha and the Dimensionals RPG Twitter accounts aggressively deleted any mentions of crypto." IcoBeast continues.

Screenshot showcasing Dimensionals X activity as they presumably removed tweets mentioning web3/crypto

"Clearly, something was brewing. And then Sasha reappeared, saying he was back and there would be a town hall soon to address everyone's concerns. The town hall happened in late March. I would provide the audio here, but it was conveniently not recorded, to my knowledge (or deleted after the fact). Sasha informed holders that they had to delay the NFT integration in the game because Steam wouldn't allow NFT-related games on the platform (which is technically false), but that in mid-late 2025, after they had their successful launch and DLC, they would be looking at NFT integration and a "rental marketplace" for stone holders to rent out their exclusive skins and powerful characters to other players.

Given that he had already told investors that they were utterly pivoting out of crypto, this seems somewhat incredulous and many of us called him on it - rather than delivering 12 playable heroes to holders throughout 2023, we might be getting some vaporous marketplace to rent some as-of-yet-nonexistent skins to some nonexistent player base in late 2025.

He also said he would add some bids on stones from the treasury to allow holders who were disappointed to exit (at 0.1e... when most had bought their stones at >1e). Still, they were excited and thankful for those who would choose to keep holding to see what was coming in the future, even if substantially delayed.

Somewhere between 5-8e was deployed to allow for exit liquidity (so <10% of the stone supply). He also promised that he would hold another town hall in a couple of weeks after everyone had time to process the timeline delay to answer any other questions, and he'd refill bids then to allow people to exit if they desired. And then that town hall got delayed... and then it never happened. And then May and June rolled around... And then they decided they weren't adding any more exit bids for holders - as per a message from one of the lower-level staff members... with no further explanation. And then silence. The Exit was nearing." states IcoBeast.

Negotiations and Remedial Plans

"The silence continued through July 2024. I posted on Twitter about exposing a large rug that was taking place - and was then mysteriously banned from the holder discord less than 24 hours later."

Discord screenshot showcasing IcoBeast's conversation with Dimensionals staff members

"I got unbanned after they realized I wasn't quite as easy to silence as others who had met the same fate (RIP Casey and others) and that's when I started grabbing as many screencaps as possible. It was clear the exit was coming.

GhostKing posted a message around July 11th that "Sasha is preparing an announcement for holders that will go out this week or next". Unsurprisingly, that message from Sasha took almost a month to go out."

Discord screenshot showcasing IcoBeast's suggestion to liquidate assets and buyback all Dimensionals NFTs from community

In the interim, I supplied the team with a remediation plan to help everyone exit gracefully, even if substantially financially damaged. Here it is: distribute the ~33e in assets and royalties to holders pro-rata. If you're truly leaving web3, you have no need for this crypto, and you certainly haven't delivered any value to holders thus far. Cleanly cut ties and be done with it. Still no announcement... and then - the exit." shares IcoBeast with screenshots from his own personal Discord conversations with the team.

The Exit

IcoBeast concludes the recap: "On August 15 - over a month after the most recent "we're getting you an announcement soon" message, GhostKing posts in the (now dead) server - they were going to liquidate any remaining treasury assets and distribute all the funds in the MinoGamesPlays wallet to holders allegedly based on MinoPoints The few holders who still had been sticking around immediately asked how exactly anyone was supposed to know their Mino Points since the website had been decommissioned in March (and never brought back). In addition, a number of us asked for an explanation as to why the royalties wallet (~16.5e) wasn't also being distributed. Those questions were all ignored. On Saturday afternoon, around 2PM ET, the team sent a single transaction through the Multisend Function on Mainnet to distribute approximately 14.7e to a handful of holders (allegedly) based on Mino Points."

Screenshot of the Multisender transaction associated with Mino Games "fund distribution based on Mino Points"

"Shortly thereafter a notice was posted in the Discord, without any transaction hash saying that distribution was complete and the Discord would be shuttering soon. I immediately jumped in to notify the team that they missed the Blur ETH in the treasury wallet (another 2.2e) and they completely ignored the >16e sitting in the royalties wallet.  

Rather than resolve any of these issues, Blackedout and GhostKing wiped the entire server at approximately 2:40PM ET on Saturday the 17th. And that was the end.

The wallet that sold Overworld Incarna (that should have been part of the payout) is still sitting with 2.2 blur bid eth: 0x8942cf0384ad40b9caaf14b23ad0123a5fb3e7e7

The royalties wallet is still sitting with ~16e from royalties over the lifetime of trading... which should go back to holders given that Dimensionals has completely abandoned holders: 0x342fe190738e1e1D197a0E62aC385Ee82454fCD3

If I'm honest, it wouldn't shock me if they were previously unaware that the royalties wallet even exists...but I told them about it over a month ago, so they can't claim they weren't on notice." he adds.

Next Steps?

When presented with the question around next steps, IcoBeast shares: "We had this discussion about free mints a few weeks ago - is it a rug or is it just a bad situation?

If it was a free mint, does it matter? I would argue yes, it does—the team continued to make promises of utility well after the mint, those promises induced people to buy the assets, those promises were never delivered on, and the team materially benefited from those trades (via royalties that they never redistributed back to holders).

Ultimately a 'free mint' only absolves you of responsibility (on an ethical level) if you make no promises to holders beyond mint. That is not the case here.

Further, they did not shut off trading the instant it was decided that they were leaving crypto (presumably around the time of the H2 2023 investor update).

However, there isn't much to do about it... other than expose bad actors and hopefully make some noise. The worst part about bad actors in web3/crypto is they almost never face repercussions for willful bad actions.

Even today you saw the CEO try to front run this post by issuing an X longform mere hours before when I privately told him an exposé was going live." he added, referring to Sasha's post on X, mentioned earlier.

"Truth be told, I really didn't want to write this. I didn't want to feel the need to expose the constant bad actions and unethical decision-making. I wanted to believe they'd finally choose to do the right thing.

I even went as far as to DM the appropriate parties and tell them this was coming... and they then banned me from the "new" Discord (which I've been a silent member for months).  They're concerned. They bet the company on Dimensionals and need it to succeed. They clearly could not perform in crypto, and they're terrified of anyone knowing (or thinking) that Dimensionals has any relation to crypto.

That's why they aggressively scrubbed their socials. That's why they silently created a new Discord just for the game and didn't tell holders, and that's why they have been tiptoeing around the history of the project for months... and even lying about it on the official Steam Page discussion boards found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2856450.

What could they do? It's simple.

Push the Incarna Blur ETH and Royalties to holders just like the MinoGamesPlays wallet ETH. It won't even come close to covering the losses from holders who bought in because of the promised utility and passive asset generation, but it's the right thing to do. And ultimately, that's all I care about - teams doing the right thing. You all know me by now.

You know I've built my reputation and followed up by trying to provide good opportunities for others while calling out bad actors and things that feel 'off'. This is one of those situations. Business failures happen. Most web3 projects will fail. But completely failing to deliver on promises, then trying to blame everyone else without accepting responsibility, then going radio silent for months at a time, then botching the delivery of a remedial plan, AND THEN DESTROYING THE DISCORD WITHOUT ANSWERING ANY QUESTIONS is unacceptable behaviour." IcoBeast continues before concluding:

"This project caused me to quit my policy of providing free support and/or advising. It's also why I stopped taking calls with founders of projects in which I hold even marginal assets. Teams must do better than this. As a final note, there are many crocodile tears on the timeline today. These public-facing updates are far too late to be taken seriously.

Do not believe them.

If they cared about web3 gaming or asset holders or anyone other than themselves, this would have been done months ago. I even received a DM this morning from the founder urging me not to post my "hit piece" because the "drama" would be "bad for the web3 gaming community", but the time for that has long passed. Bad actors and grifters are getting exposed." he concludes.

Conclusion

This isn't the first, and definitely won't be the last, time we watch game studios, and developers pivot out of web3 gaming, given the many challenges and new hurdles even the most successful teams face when venturing into the crypto space; however, it is rather clear that the overall sentiment surrounding such pivots and exits entirely depends on the manner in which these teams choose to do so. 

While many X users took to Sasha's post to wish him and the Mino Games team the best in their next adventure, many others remained upset and disheartened by the lack of communication and overall "reactive" direction the team chose to take when addressing the whole situation - citing IcoBeast's thread and their own personal experiences with the projects in the process.