The Printer keeps working overtime in Splinterlands and soon there will be new reward cards that have different dynamics and there is also a new Mini-Set Coming Up. Here are some thoughts on them...
The Market Sets Pack Prices Now...
This is a concept that only crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago after there was a (failed) attempt to push up the price of SPS to 0.014$ by setting that as the value which equals a 5$ pack price paid in credits.
The reality though, is that 5$ for a pack of cards is insanely overvalued, as those are peak fomo markey cycle top prices that people only really are willing to pay when they have way too much money like in the Chaos Legion times. The reality now is that nobody is really interested in Splinterlands and there are near zero actual new players coming in to the game as the earnings are just low while asset prices continue to only go down.
I have been watching Card prices in the past days along with the Total Card Market Cap and things are crashing quite hard. Based on the #sm-voters_hut channel in Discord the Market Cap Recently went like this
| Date | Card Marketcap |
|---|---|
| 09/09/2025 | 36,101 Million |
| 12/09/2025 | 35,769 Million |
| 16/09/2025 | 35,629 Million |
| 18/09/2025 | 35,456 Million |
| 21/09/2025 | 35,144 Million |
| 24/09/2025 | 35,005 Million |
| 28/09/2025 | 34,806 Million |
| 01/10/2025 | 34,439 Million |
| 05/10/2025 | 34,252 Million |
| 07/10/2025 | 34,132 Million |
| 08/10/2025 | 33,389 Million |
| 09/10/2025 | 32,535 Million |
| Now | 32,273 Million |
Basically, they are collapsing down and down and down because there is nothing really holding them up and no demand from new players is coming in. All this downtrend also doesn't include all the new cards that are added daily from the Foundation Reward cards and packs that are opened. There are also millions of Chaos Legion Packs still unopened. The worst thing is that while all this is happening, all the focus is on the new reward cards and the New Mini set which is coming up.
The main thinking mistake, which I believe made things worse, was to price the new packs in SPS in the hope it would push the price of SPS up which would increase the rewards, which would increase the demand, which whould justify the price,...
The way it turned out is that right now, the market based on supply and demand, is pretty much setting the pack price, and DEC repriced based on the SPS set 0.014$ price.
Pack Price in Creditc = 5.00$ Pack Price in DEC = 3.28$ Pack Price in SPS = 2.67$
So SPS has a tiny pump on the announcement as some people likely bought with an eye to flip it for a profit. However, it looks like it's getting to an equilibrium now where DEC is being dumped to the point where the price of a pack is similar to DEC and SPS.
People simply aren't valueing pack at the 5$ price which puts more pressure on both DEC and SPS. The fact that the team gets a whopping 1.2 Billion DEC they will be dumping in the market which sets the 'Flywheel' back a lot also doesn't help.
The New Reward Set...
The details on the new reward set were released on Medium (Link while the Hive Blogging Platform seems to have been ditched. This is a summary
So basically, the bar gets raised a lot (again) as the costs of chest in glints doubled and the chance to get a gold foils from Card Draws has been reduced from 4% to 1% with the main benefit that Gold Card now can be sold on the market and Scrolls will be part of the rewards, which allows for Raegular cards to be unbound become tradable. Gold cards are also limited i print rates.
The big question is where the demand will come from for these unbound cards since Spinterlands has a lot of players who just bot with existing assets without the intention to put more money in the game and no real new players who are starting out. So once again they kind of fully rely on a handful of Whale players expecting them to buy up to gold cards to give them value but, I'm not sure how much longer they can keep pressing that button as eventuallu those will also get fed up and just exit the game.
The Main Dilemma
I see 2 options as the main dilemma for most players.
- Continue Building and acquire the cards toward Max Level
- Try to get something out of it and Dump it all.
The most likely outcome the way things look now is that many who are sitting on Glints that was saved up will use it all at the start and just put what they got for sale and see what people are willing to pay for it. As time passes by and more rewards are distributed, the supply will get higher while the demand likely will get lower which means prices get undercut in another race to the absolute bottom.
My Personal Plan
While I always loved the collecting aspect of Splinterlands, it has just gotten to a point where none of it makes any sense anymore as nothing is done to keep the values of old cards up. Those just trend toward the DEC burn Value while DEC is trending down to where people see Packs priced at a fairer value. This pretty much is en eternal negative spiral and the one weakens the other and so on. Splinterlands should strive to get in a positive spiral again but I don't see any way with how things are handled right now to make this happen.
So The way I'm going to approach things for the coming set is to just sell everything (aside from SPS) at the lowest market price as I don't see many things in place that will help to hold prices up over time. I already have enough assets and I'm not interested in spending 10000$+ yearly to be forced to grind hours of Modern manually daily to keep up and earn only a fraction of the investment back during that time.
The Real Solution...
The sad thing is that all of this is so blatantly obvious by now yet only the ones who long left the game are seeing it and the devs mainly are driven by keeping the short-term paychecks coming. I think the priority should be on making the game as fun as possible which requires a completely new game mode like Draft Mode (See This Could Fix Everything).
The continued card devaluation also needs to be stopped and fixed as packs prices are just going to keep being adjusted down by the market which means a broken econcomy where DEC is just trading way below peg and SPS which is going nowhere.
If old cards are worthless, no new players are ever going to come in since they are sure to get rekt so the oversupply needs to be fixed. Having a simple mechanic to needing to burn an old card in order to unbound one of the newer ones could do a lot already.
Conclusion
Altseason isn't going to save Splinterlands, and I see the new attempt with the changes for the next reward set turning out in another race to the bottom, where eventually there is a ton of supply but near zero demand all while the card supply keeps going higher and higher with no now players coming in. The only way to save Splinterlands is to make a fun Game Mode that is really fun while being affordable and accessible to everyone!