I've been watching Splinterlands from the beginning before there was a game to play. I've been working in the card game industry for years. Long time MTG analyst and I've worked in LGS and 3rd party tourneys in a lot of different roles. Judge, TO, secondary market sales. I started an account but could never bring myself to pay for the spellbook. I almost moved all my steem into the game once when I wanted to join the land expansion but I didn't like how the first round went. I guess I'll probably never join now.
That being said I think you're missing some key factors around SPS. I'm not surprised because there's lots of bad analysis on it and few people have really gone through it with a fine tooth comb. One aspect to consider about it and the impact of the VC and strategic partnerships they are trading the sps to as 'private offerings'. It will be interesting to see what impact these partnerships will have over time but there are already some observable instances.
One of these partnerships is with a PR group called Market Across based in Israel.
From this not only can we have a deeper understanding of how they define 'partners' but the long term expectations of the PR firm's efficacy on social media. I'm sure that 0.5 likes per month will really do lots for the community long term and was fake money well spent.
So you're basically saying, the same PR firm that Justin "Hernan Cortez" Sun sponsored is now funding SPS?
They aren't funding it. They are just doing sponsored content for them and passing it off as third party validation
The same third parties that were okay with the 20 false witnesses on Hive?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism this cycle of yesmanism 'content' has been around for some time. It's not strictly unethical but it's like an infomercial. The main problem with is when there is a lack of transparency and they are major offenders. I've already noticed sponsored content on YouTube and YouTube requires their channel to be transparent about ads. Lots of channels I like do sponsored content like this and it's good as long as the consumers know the information is biased.
For reference this is what disclosing sponsored content looks like