Splinterlands wants some card owners to pay now, before a price goes up. It hasn’t said how much higher that price will be.
On November 10, 2026, Splinterlands, a crypto card battle game, posted its weekly update on X. The main feature is three new battle rulesets: Chain Reaction, Live and Let Die, and Plague Rot. Rulesets are special conditions that change how a match plays out. The update also opens a pre-sale for owners of Visions of Verico cards. The pre-sale is where the post asks for money, and it leaves out a key number.
A Token Holding Up Better Than Most, but Still Slipping
The game’s token, Splintershards (SPS), pays out rewards in Splinterlands’ ranked mode. Over the past 90 days, SPS gained 13.1%, a little better than the 9.3% rise for other gaming tokens. Over the past month, SPS fell 9.0%, while other gaming tokens dropped 21.0%. Over a full year, SPS lost 45.9% of its value. That beats the 58.5% drop for gaming tokens, but it still leaves SPS worth only about half of what it was.
In the last 30 days, SPS traded between $0.003692 and $0.004147, a narrow band. The update didn’t give it a lift. In the day after the announcement, SPS fell 2.6%, while gaming tokens slipped 0.5%. For players who earn SPS in ranked battles, beating a falling field is cold comfort.
Three New Ways to Fight, and One Way to Pay
Each new ruleset changes a basic part of combat. In Chain Reaction, when a unit dies, every unit next to it takes 2 physical damage, so card placement matters more. Live and Let Die turns off comeback abilities such as Rebirth, Resurgence, Resurrect and Soul Siphon. Plague Rot flips Life Leech and Scavenger so they lower a unit’s health instead of raising it.
The rest is smaller: matchmaking tweaks, a new ability for a card called Mistwing, bug fixes, community-made stickers and easier skin management.
Then there’s the pre-sale. Owners of Visions of Verico cards can buy a five-year renewal of their Alteration drops for 10,000 Credits, 10,000 DEC or 10 USDC, until December 31, 2026. USDC is a crypto token pegged to the US dollar, so that last option costs $10.
On the surface, $10 for five years sounds cheap. But there’s a catch. The post says that after the sale ends, “the price to extend Alteration claims beyond August 2027 will increase.” It never says by how much. That’s a familiar sales push: buy now or pay more later, with no number to compare. Card owners are being asked to decide before they know what waiting would cost.
Always Shipping, but for Whom?
Splinterlands posts a lot of updates. Its weekly release on September 30, 2026, said the game is “always shipping” and added a six-bracket system to Modern Ranked. That post gave 53% of each season’s SPS reward pool to the top Champion bracket and just 1% to Novice. It also warned that a bracket’s prize pool “may be reduced” if not enough players take part. One week before this update, the team launched Starlight, a set of 36 new cards with three exclusive pack types.
That’s a steady pace, and the team deserves credit for it. But much of it points toward buying: new packs, shop cards, skins and now a renewal sale. So is this stream of updates bringing in new players, or mostly asking the same ones to spend more?
The Cards Look Sharp, but the App Has Problems
To be fair, the game looks good. Its cards use bright, cartoon-style fantasy art with framed portraits and gold borders, a lot like Hearthstone. The cast runs from armored dwarves to animal warriors, and each card is easy to tell apart.
But good looks only go so far. On Google Play, the app has a 4.6-star rating from 218 ratings. Long-time players like that it works on phone and computer and that they own their cards. Recent reviews are rougher, with complaints about crashes, a “transaction expired” bug that blocked play, and weak servers. One player who reviewed the app on September 30 said they waited “almost an hour” for maintenance to end. Another said the game is fun but needs “lots of spending.”
There’s also a warning sign. A big burst of short, upbeat five-star reviews arrived in a single week in May 2025, when the mobile app launched. Many came from self-described long-time players, so it may have been a fan push rather than fake accounts. Still, it may make the rating look better than recent reviews suggest. The video comments look more genuine, with only a few attention-seeking posts and one giveaway link.
Is the Community as Big as It Looks?
Splinterlands’ X account has 59,046 followers. Yet this update drew just 26 likes, 6 reposts, 2 replies and 796 views, equal to about 1.3% of its followers. One reply asked whether the Survival cooldown bug had also hit land cards. The other was a spam offer to “DM me.”
The account’s other posts since late September drew 37 to 52 likes each. The group that actually reacts seems small. The game also has more than 50,000 Google Play installs but only 218 ratings, and its YouTube channel gained only about 1,122 views in the past month.
The Bottom Line
The three new rulesets are real changes that could make battles more interesting. But SPS is worth about half of what it was a year ago, recent reviews point to crashes and server trouble, engagement is thin, and the pre-sale asks card owners to pay now without naming the later price. Until Splinterlands shares that number, anyone thinking of buying in should wait for real details.
