Splinterlands is not self sustained, beside dhf founds, basically every development is being paid by the Dao, lands, validates, etc... They would be dead already without Dao...
I disagree with that... Without the DHF funds, it would not be dead, but there would be less development, for sure... Selling stuff in the game is the way to be self-sustainable... How would you generate income for your game? How would you pay developers, coders, artists?
The problem with hive monetizing is that you get votes only if you know the right persons, I see trash content getting big votes just because friend of someone or autovotes, and good content getting little to nothing
That is partially true, and we should work on that... Btw. don't get me wrong, but you are writing about these problems, while you are the problem too... Delegating all your HivePower to someone else gives power to that party to upvote (and downvote) posts with YOUR power... They pick good or bad posts, and they are those "friends-who-are-upvoting" that you mentioned...
Isn't better that you upvote people with YOUR HivePower that YOU want to support? If everyone would do that, we wouldn't have too many things that you described...
Just my 2c... Nothing personal... 😉
Regarding splinterlands, I'm not talking about dhf founds, maybe you are not much into it but the community (sps.dao) has basically been paying most of developments for more than a year keeping alive the company, check these
https://peakd.com/@splinterlands/sps-governance-proposal-hire-splinterlands-to-develop-the-next-major-card-set-conclave-arcana
https://peakd.com/@splinterlands/sps-governance-proposal-hire-cryptomancer-to-develop-the-secret-of-praetoria-land-expansion
(in this one the community pays cryptomancer 30k$ stable every month, all money not paid by the company)
https://peakd.com/@splinterlands/sps-governance-proposal-hire-jptr-corp-to-develop-sps-chain
And more...
You are right on the second point, but I consider my full HP so crappy and little that my vote matters like a plancton in the ocean 😅
Regarding Splinterlands, I know that DAO pays out salaries, but I don't know how they fund all things around... All in all, IMO, the bad money management was the main reason SPL went in the bad direction... Again... It's easy to criticize from the sidelines... I'm not sure that I will do better in that situation either...
Don't underestimate your power... There are many plankton in the sea... Much more than whales... 😉