RE: Drugwars - Introducing FUTURE the new DrugWars Token.
Cryptocurrencies generally are considered an investment in the financial world though. The two things they are generally classed as are investments or a form of currency (in reality they are both but some people will class them as only one or the other). They certainly aren't a game though. Investing in them is uncertain so you could say investing in them is a "gamble" but something being uncertain / being a "gamble" is not the same as it being a game and cryptocurrencies do not meet the basic definition of a game.
A college degree is considered an investment too. Does this mean we should have the right to sue all colleges who put us deep into debt via college loans etc? After all, we could make the claim of false advertising, scam, etc, just as some people say about the gaming business.
My point is, yes you can go with that angle but to be lawsuit happy only brings greater lawsuit risk for all parties. Lawyers benefit of course when everyone is suing everyone but the industry suffers because innovation becomes much more costly.
I'm going to say I agree that from an ethical point of view perhaps the DrugWars team messed up. They did not consider the impact their decisions could have on the sentiment of their customers/players. Player sentiment in my opinion should come before all.
If they can find a way to profit in a way where the players share in the success as stakeholders then I'd be okay with it. Drugwars in my opinion should also become an SMT and support the Steem ecosystem but the exact economics in my opinion need to be negotiated with the community. The team needs to understand that a loyal fanbase can allow future games to inherit the same players (player loyalty) in the same way Blizzard for example did with World of Warcraft from the Starcraft, Diablo and other fanbases.
"A college degree is considered an investment too. "
Not in the way I'm talking. I'm talking about financial investments - shares, term deposits, bonds, rental properties, government bonds etc. A university degree does not fit into that description, but yes, it is an investment in yourself, but not a financial investment. It would have been ridiculous in the financial planning courses etc I did at university if we learned about those sorts of investments, because investing in financial investments is a completely different thing to investing in yourself via education etc.
But I never went with the angle of lawsuits or calling drugwars a scam. I said I don't agree with the people calling it a scam etc and I think it is just that they changed direction, but people's choices were still made based on the value proposition originally mentioned so that included the steem, not just the upgrade. All of this is truthful. I don't think it is a scam, and I think what they do from here might be what actually improves the game, but it doesn't change the fact people put money into it based on the value proposition offered. That's what the situation is. I don't think people should sue them or call them scammers, but I do think both morally and for the sake of positive public relations they shouldn't pump their new coin with the steem spent as artificially doing that by buying it themselves doesn't often work so people will lose out from them doing that, but they SHOULD continue paying out steem via drug wars until it is all gone. They've now given us future tokens but still seem to be paying steem so I think they may actually be doing it, and if they are doing it, I think that's the best thing they could have done.
I never went with the angle of suing them or calling them a scam but I did say they should respond correctly to changing the way the game works and the resulting backlash, and that I don't blame other people for being pissed off.
As for games, it was the other person who was making a point about it being a game anyway as though that absolved it of responsibility, but it doesn't. If it did, people wouldn't have been able to get refunds on No Mans Sky for their false advertising. It doesn't matter if steem is a game or not, as that doesn't change anything in this situation, but you'd be really stretching to say that it is / it does meet the definition of a game and most people wouldn't agree with someone who made that claim, regardless of if it was steem or bitcoin or whatever else. Risk and uncertainty doesn't make something a game either, or shares would be a game too as they are uncertain, risky and can drop too.
How someone invests could be gamified but that's them gamifying a task in their life. I gamify most of my life as it works well for me and my goals but that doesn't make the individual tasks at their essence a game. It gamifies my experience of doing that task.
As far as I can see we agree that player sentiment / positive public relations is important in this situation and they messed up ethically. I never said we should sue them and I talked about what they could do to not "look like" scammers etc. I think we actually agree on the main point here because I said nothing about suing them and actually said I don't agree with calling them a scam etc. We just disagree on whether cryptocurrencies at their root are games or not and whether cryptocurrencies are considered investments, and also we were using different definitions of the word investment as I was using the financial definition and you were using the broader definition that includes investing in yourself etc. We agree on the main point here, and I don't think anyone should be suing drugwars.