The most expensive spaceship NFT in open world game Star Atlas has been sold for $5 after a coding error removed the zeros from marketplace listings.
Several other ships were also sold well below Star Atlas’ intended prices after the buggy listings went live on March 13 (UTC). Star Atlas moved to correct the error soon after the prices were published by wiping the metadata of the original $5m Titan-class spaceship NFT, rendering it worthless for game purposes.
The move caused some controversy in the game’s community, given that it highlights the possibility of Star Atlas changing the attributes of NFTs already in private ownership.
The error was first noticed publicly by Star Atlas (SA) community member DP, who wrote “OMG WHAT ARE U DOING … SA team are you drunk?” on the game’s Discord.
Moderators responded and In under 30 minutes the listings had come down. According to a Star Atlas statement, the error was picked up “internally shortly after the incorrect listings went live”.
“As you may know, earlier today select CSS Land & ships were listed on the Galactic Marketplace at extremely low prices … it appears that a formatting error in a listing script caused prices above 1000 USDC to become truncated.”
Records on the game’s Solana blockchain show the Titan ship, formally named Busan The Last Stand Mk. III, being transferred to a private wallet. Less than an hour later, a coding change by the NFT’s creators had wiped the metadata.
Reversing the mistake
Star Atlas community members debated how the temporary owner should be compensated, and whether SA admins had done the right thing. User [DEEP] Digital Fists said this:
“You can’t disregard laws when they don’t suit you. Reversing a completed transaction after you yourself made the mistake is wrong. These mistakes happen all the time from users, and they suffer the loss. No one steps in to reverse their mistake.”
At the moment there are only three Titan class spaceships listed for sale on the SA marketplace, all at $5m. None have been sold at that price. The ships take over 100 players to crew and are massive, intricately detailed objects.
There are thousands of other ships for sale in the ambitious, much-delayed game. See Polemos’ first look at the Star Atlas’ pre-alpha demo release.
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