The video-game industry has always been at the forefront of technology, but it is still considered to be emerging.
In October of 2021, Valve banned all games related to the ledger. New players are paying hundreds of dollars to get mythical pets and love Potions in Axie Infinity, an NFT-based online game.
We reached out to several active investors in the space to get a clearer picture of where opportunities exist today and what they see on the horizon. They were asked to give advice and thoughts on how regulation might affect the industry.
The head of investments, Americas at Prosus Venture, said that growth wasn't a key consideration. What are the pain points we can alleviate? Growth is no longer a priority, utility is.
We did a survey.
Kenrick Drijkoningen is general partner of Play Ventures.
The head of investments is Banafsheh Fathieh.
Josh Chapman is the managing partner of Konvoy.
Eddie Thai is a general partner of Ascend Vietnam.
The Yield Guild Games was co-founded by Beryl Li.
Rajul Garg is the founder and managing partner of Leo Capital.
Kenrick Drijkoningen is general partner of Play Ventures.
What was your initial reaction to the ban on games on Steam?
It wasn't a huge surprise to move from Steam. New business models are not always welcomed by incumbents and gaming is no different. As a new space, NFTs are beridden with projects of varying quality and we believe that Steam wants to do some quality assurance and wait until the situation improves. At the time of writing, MIR4 is running at 88,000 concurrent users. There is still a gray area about how these games are classified.
What advice have you given to your companies? What kind of assistance do gaming companies seek from you?
We act as sparring partners for the founders. We have mostly assisted the teams in navigating the technology stack, i.e., whatBlockchains and/or scaling solutions to consider, as well as token economic design. It is important to embrace a native approach of building and experimenting with the product while also involving your community in the process.
What do you think about the regulatory environment for gaming? Is the uncertainty making you rethink?
No. It is not the first time that innovation has outpaced regulation and we think it is a natural reaction to new consumer behavior and ways of building companies. Before democratizing the taxi medallion system and providing an outsized improvement for end users of taxi services, Uber fought an uphill battle with regulators. This doesn't mean that companies and projects should build products that are against the law but rather engage in healthy discussion with regulators as the adoption of their products increases
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