Is the game MetaVirus a scam?

Introduction
MetaVirus, a crypto-based game project, recently completed a highly successful Initial DEX Offering (IDO), raising around $10 million in just a day across multiple platforms. Their first playtest took place in December 2023, with the next one expected between December and January.

The Game
MetaVirus draws inspiration from games like Axie Infinity but has a visual style reminiscent of MyDefiPet. Their goal is to make the game available on all platforms. In the 2023 playtest, minting of Genesis pet NFTs took place on the Polygon and Binance Smart Chain networks.

The Team Behind MetaVirus
MetaVirus’s core team consists of four members. While I found details about the CEO and CTO I could not find any information on the CFO and Graphics designer.

• CEO: Brice Bian (Xiaochun Bian) — Brice Bian is currently based in British Columbia, Canada. He is the founder of NexGami, a Web3 gaming platform, and launchpad that helps launch crypto games. Currently, MetaVirus is the only game on NexGami. What adds credibility to NexGami is the announcement from HTX Ventures (formerly known as Huobi) that it will invest in NexGami to grow the GameFi ecosystem. Brice also has prior experience at Racoon Entertainment, a mobile game company.
• CTO: Marco Tuo — Marco’s background includes work at 酷鸟飞飞, a Beijing-based company specializing in VR, tourism, and game development.

The Community
From what I’ve seen much of the MetaVirus community seems to consist of bots posting in the chat. Interestingly, these bots appear to be writing negatively about the recent IDO. I find this strange and I wonder why they would talk in such a negative way about their own token.

Even though it’s normal to see a drop in community engagement it appears that the whole community is laying dormant for now and will continue until we hopefully see a new playtest in a few months. When it comes to the previous playtest in 2023 I could not find any community talk about this from chat on Discord.

Conclusion
MetaVirus appears to be a legitimate project with somewhat experienced developers. However, it’s concerning that they have yet to release a whitepaper, especially after launching their IDO. The fact that both the CEO and CTO are based in Canada provides some reassurance, as they would be subject to legal and financial accountability in the case of a rug pull or exit scam. It is concerning to find so few people talking about the earlier playtest when reviewing the Discord logs and only time will tell if this will turn out to be a real game.