But… it still costs money. The new “Tower Key” to access the pre-alpha DEADROP is $25, which I believe is half what the founders paid for their NFT profile picture. This tower key doesn’t give you “VisorCortex”, the NFT avatar/game profile, but it does give you access to the actual game from Snapshot V, where the game is at least working now. bit, so you can get a baseline of how it looks and plays. You can’t be a founder anymore because those slots are limited, but the game still needs money, hence the sale of those new tower keys.
While in the past the only people with access to DEADROP were the “Variation” founders who paid for an NFT, for what he considers “limited-time” pre-alpha access ” is open to all potential players, does not seem to require NFT.
So is it harmful to charge alpha in advance? Eh, I don’t know, it’s not pretty, but it makes me shrug. I’ve certainly seen much worse (Star Citizen, anyone?) And at least NFT is out of the equation here. While Doc talked about ideas like mining $100,000 worth of blockchain items as a form of fun and entertainment, at least for now DEADROP might not be as hard on web3 and NFT as it was initially, as it is now more focused on filming and playing the actual game. Now that it’s a playable shooter, is DEADROP more promising?
I mean sure, a little bit. The new footage is largely pre-alpha, with a lot of tweaking needed, but has been in development for a year, basically, so it looks pretty solid. And there’s no denying that the original Doc’s reach gave this a boost, thanks to his influence and all the fellow streamers he was able to play and promote. I would also like to say that this thing gets as far away from NFT as possible and given that nearly the entire industry has moved away from web3/crypto integration, perhaps DEADROP will also be able to read the writing on the wall, despite personal concerns of Doc for blockchain. But who knows.
So if you want, you can buy the tower key for $25 right now and start playing. If not, access will likely continue to expand over time, although it’s unclear when or if DEADROP will become completely free, as this seems like something that may not happen until debut itself.