Bots, the good, the bad and awful.
There have been games out there that have withstood the onslaught of botting and there are games that haven't. To those beasts of software that have succumbed, my sympathies to you and those that yet stand, congratulations.
The good, yes bots have a good side, they save humans time, the can make money for an individual or group and even let a developer earn extra income when each of those bots pays the service fee or join fee per account.
Honestly there are tons of clicker games I'd love to see botted into destruction or the make lots of money off of myself. But the truth is, I just don't see the point of ruining a nice game or software with something so many think of as evil, and it's just evil because they don't have the balls to go out and suck the life out of a game community themselves. How nice of them, until they rage quit or endlessly complain in forums or local chats or some other social media.
Truthfully there are a couple of interesting stories about people beating bots or hackers etc out there and some really funny ones also. Personal triumph is always heartwarming after all. Another bad thing, there is the prevalence to blame someone from certain countries or regions, endless complaints about chinese bot farmers during WOW and my mmo days, comes to mind. But truthfully these days every country has hackers and bot-ers now. Who can you hate, your neighbor for pissing on your game community... Why not! I still face the daily thought that one more account and i'll be making extra cards and dec every week. One more step and yes a computer can do it for me too and then after i have 10, why not 100, okay my apartment or house can only fit 3 or 4 more cpu's at the moment but...!!! Imagine if i made enough to rent a warehouse and farm bitcoin and games at the same time, now i can get all the local workers to click start and avoid 'i am human checks'. I'll be rich in no time~!!! Ah I have such big plans to profit off this game, ah crap it shut the servers down and I move to a new game... end of fantasy.
Well haters aside doomed games are doomed because there is a means to exploit them or a flaw in the system and people give up on it, not always for a lack of effort or intent. Will SplinterLands succeed or fail, time will tell. There is a huge precedence out there with other similar game types and systems. For some reason I see the NFT market in a similar way. Easy in easy out. Sure historically we will gain some insight and learn for the next layer or technical advancement, but everything has a timeline.
I'll leave it to the devs to solve the current botting explosion or at the very least not let it destroy the SP community, and try to play or invest smartly. Let us hope the future is profitable and fun.
Now for the Awful. Wait, yeah it is the hate, the frustration and failure of the game staff and community from falling apart. Player becoming angry at changes for the good or the bad of the experience, loss of income and worse, loss of friends and potential friends over items of theoretical value. If anything it is the system of anonymity that let's botters continue the most. If you are just a name on the screen then there is no real culpability.
Random thoughts off>