Is This the Worst NFT Art Reveal Of All Time?

If you thought the final nail in the coffin of Game of Thrones was the utterly disappointing Season 8 finale, I regret to inform you we have somehow discovered a deeper layer of hell in Westeros.

The Game of Thrones: Build Your Realm Hero Box collection went on sale this past Tuesday 10th January, minting on NFT marketplace niftys.com amidst an undercurrent of hype and high expectation. It was a sell out that same day, taking around seven hours for the total supply of 4950 to be snapped up by eager NFT and GoT lovers.

A great success by any measure! Until the art reveal, that is….

sadder than the wasted potential of season 8

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen” declared Treeverse Founder, Loopify. Not a light charge by any stretch.

Indeed, the avatar he was referring to was that of a man that had been inexplicably drawn with freakishly long, arched fingers. His weapons – or tools perhaps, who knows really – were floating in thin air next to the ham-fisted ghoul. Perhaps this was an HBO Easter Egg? Could it be Littlefinger’s long lost brother, Salad Fingers, making his debut for the very first time?

Sadly not. Something had gone very wrong in production – and NFT Twitter dived in to celebrate the unmitigated disaster.

The Season 8 comparisons flowed thick and fast, with Justin Taylor in particular illustrating his point with the pithy quip that both lacked creative vision and were terrible. One could add that both were seemingly rushed for no logical reason, resulting in a tragic tarnishing of a treasured legacy.

another instance of a web2 cash grab?

However, some were more angry than amused. This is not the first time a multi-million dollar company has barged their way into Web3 and embarrassed themselves. In fact, it’s happened so often at this point that people are starting to notice that they might not have the purest of intentions.

“I’m annoyed by how easily they are willing to make a shit product only because they know people will buy it. They give zero fucks about their most loyal fans,” Said founder of Namespace, thecap.eth, lambasting yet another lackluster showing from a Web2 giant.

memed into the hall of fame

These mistakes have a funny way of turning out sometimes though. There’s something about a completely botched art reveal that brings immense joy to NFT Twitter, and sometimes once the anger has subsided, the villain lives long enough to become the hero.

The finest example of this would be Kevin of Pixelmon. The once much hyped project which minted for 3 ETH revealed its art and horrified us all. Kevin eventually became a legendary meme and is now a highly sought after collector’s item. Kevin’s unfortunate existence alone helped pump the floor price of Pixelmon long after it was confirmed to be a soft rug pull.

We could see the same with this Game of Thrones collection. DAZ 3D, the creation platform in charge of the GoT project, at first assured holders that the glitches in the artwork would be fixed and updated. However, by this point, some had paid up to 1 ETH for the worst affected avatars and were not pleased for these changes to take place. That’s correct, they wanted the errors kept. 

A day later, DAZ 3D backtracked and confirmed all avatars would remain in their original cursed state.

The GoT boxes are currently struggling with a floor price of 0.0599 ETH with volume slowing down on sales.

Time will tell if the collection can recover and get a second wind. Something tells us that the project is in very safe, big hands.