The Real Reason Ludwig Threatened This NFT Project With Legal Action
NFTs have been causing controversy on the internet for quite awhile now, and they started having a big impact on the gaming community in December 2021 when Ubisoft's gaming NFTs caused an uproar. The digital pieces of art haven't been warmly welcomed by the community, and even Konami had fans fuming as it incorporated NFTs into the 35th anniversary of "Castlevania." Now, one NFT scam had Ludwig threatening legal action, and it's easy to understand why.
The account, called MetaDeckz, gained attention after popular YouTuber slimewire quoted a tweet from it that had Ludwig's "Legendary" NFT – which was for sale along with other NFTs of streamers like Pokimane, xQc, Ninja, and even DrDisrespect. slimewire replied with a meme picture of a legal document with "Mogul Moves" on it along with the caption "haha dude that's so sick!!! btw look what came in the mail today."
It was clear that there could be some serious problems, and MetaDeckz reacted by sharing a video attempting to explain the situation. The artist posted a video tagging both Ludwig and slimewire, saying that "I love gaming and I love streaming and I've been an artist my whole life ... I thought I could do something really cool with trading cards and streamers ... for the community." They also claimed that they reached out to the streamers featured on the NFTs but never heard back, so they continued with the project.
Ludwig responded with a long message screenshotted from his notepad, where he mentioned legal action.
Ludwig's response
While Ludwig mentioned that his lawyers would be involved, he had plenty to say to the artist behind MetaDeckz. Ludwig pointed out that the video was a "dishonest twist" on what MetaDeckz had done and that the artist reached out less than 24 hours prior to posting the NFT – which indicated that the artwork was already completed at that point and MetaDeckz just wanted to cover its trail.
Ludwig also went after MetaDeckz reasons for creating the NFTs: "Claiming this is for my community is insane because my community roasts NFT projects for their shady practices – your project being a prime example."
MetaDeckz again responded, writing that "I could [have] done this without using any persons likeness, but I honestly thought you and the other streamers might like them ... But I see where your coming from man sorry this upset you wish the best with the move to YouTube." He also explained that he would take down the project and refuse to sell the NFTs.
Shortly after, the account took down its website and changed its bio to read "This project had been Disbanded we spent over 1000 hours on this we loved making these cards. This is now just my artist page" (as captured by Twitter user hugeblank). While the bio was eventually changed, it's clear that emotions were running high on all ends.
There haven't been any updates since everything was taken down, and it's not clear if legal action is actually being taken by Ludwig.