PUBG developer Krafton announced last year that it was getting into the shenanigans of the NFT and the Metaverse (opens in new tab), and it looks like that plan is coming to fruition. The metaverse platform has a working title of "Migaloo" and will launch this year.

As is the case with many NFT and metaverse projects, the initial announcement was rather vague and gave no real idea of what potential players could expect. More than a year later, and with the arrival imminent, nothing seems to have changed; I have no idea what Krafton or its partner, Naver Z, have in mind. It was announced that "[t]he two companies have invested 48 billion won (about US$36.8 million) to develop this platform." The platform features a Create-to-Earn (C2E) system that allows content creators to build their works in the metaverse and allows users to purchase and own them using NFT and blockchain technology.

So far, so vague. What kind of work can be created? The concept of user-generated content is an old one, and so far Krafton only offers a way to sell one's own stuff, which is hardly revolutionary in and of itself. It is also not clear how it stands out from other metaverse and NFT projects out there. The announcement adds, "It promises to be a new metaverse platform that incentivizes creators and provides transparency in transactions and payments," but this, too, is rather uncertain.

Chang-wook Kim, CEO of Naver Z, claims that "we will witness the rise of a groundbreaking metaverse platform that has the potential to transform the way content creators are motivated and rewarded with a new C2E system. Perhaps if users don't finish creating what they can create, the goons will come along and break their legs. That would certainly motivate me.

It is very easy to be incredibly skeptical of these kinds of announcements. Because they all lack specifics and sound like half-baked snake oil pitches that fail to answer the basic question of why this needs to exist. I am so tired.