Oct 21, 2021
RedFOX Labs, a Southeast Asia-based tech venture and metaverse builder, recently secured a partnership with Yield Guild Games (YGG), a major player in the fast-rising play-to-earn gaming industry. Under this partnership, YGG has become a Marquee client in the upcoming RFOX VALT virtual marketplace.
In this article, we welcome YGG as a valued partner in the RFOX ecosystem we’re building, by giving the RFOX community a primer on YGG’s growing role within the blockchain gaming and metaverse industries. RedFOX Labs’ gaming venture RFOX GAMES and YGG already share the same objective of building solutions that advance play-to-earn gaming, and this new partnership brings the two parties closer in expanding this growth to the metaverse.
Context: The Dawn of Play-to-Earn Gaming
The emergence of play-to-earn as a viable gaming sector started in 2021, with the rise in popularity of blockchain-based games such as Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, and more. However, the grassroots movement that set the path for the concept of earning livelihoods via games can be seen in many countries as early as last year.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic posed unique challenges to people’s health, mobility, and livelihoods around the world, people started using blockchain games to make ends meet. A Coindesk report from August 2020 outlined how Filipino players earned from blockchain-based game Axie Infinity, through playing the game for crypto earnings and breeding new game characters for trading as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Game economies are being built this way, and when the overall crypto market rose to new heights in 2021, thousands of people began pursuing the increasingly lucrative rewards of play-to-earn gaming. To learn more about the play-to-earn phenomenon in the Philippines, watch this video below.
Since then, the market cap for play-to-earn tokens has grown to around USD 13 billion as of October 20, 2021. Unsurprisingly, several startups began forming around the blockchain-based sector of the gaming industry to benefit from this growth while empowering more players to earn alongside them. One of these startups is Yield Guild Games.
YGG’s Rise as Major Mover in the Play-to-Earn Revolution
Yield Guild Games, launched in December 2020, is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for investing in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) used in virtual worlds and blockchain-based games. YGG’s mission is “to create the biggest virtual world economy, optimizing its community-owned assets for maximum utility and sharing its profits with its token holders.”
From an operational standpoint, YGG loans out NFTs of play-to-earn gaming assets to community members, popularly referred to as scholars, who then participate in the games and earn crypto tokens. YGG also invests in blockchain gaming and metaverse assets, such as USD 2 million worth of virtual land in Axie Infinity and another USD 242,000 in The Sandbox.
YGG currently has 4,700 scholars worldwide, with plans to increase that number to 15,000 by year-end, and a strong community of 60,000 gamers. YGG, its scholars and community managers have cumulatively earned USD 10.13M to date.
What makes YGG unique, aside from its use of blockchain technology to empower play-to-earn gaming for more people who would otherwise be prevented from doing so, is its success in integrating institutional and crypto-financial support in its operations.
So far, YGG has secured USD 22.4 million in funding, including a USD 1.325 million seed round led by Delphi Digital, a USD 4 million Series A funding round led by gaming firm BITKRAFT, and a USD 4.6 million investment from a group led by Andreessen Horowitz. But the most significant source of funding for YGG came from its USD 12.5 million offering of YGG tokens, which were sold out in just 31 seconds.
These milestones signal investors’ bullish outlook on the play-to-earn gaming industry, as well as on industry builders such as YGG. In effect, YGG’s moves are seen as an indicator of which parts of the gaming and metaverse industries are worth investing in.
In this context, RedFOX Labs’ extensive history with YGG is worth pointing out.
Fruitful Collaboration Between RedFOX Labs and YGG
Before YGG’s deal as Marquee client in the RFOX VALT metaverse, the influential gaming guild has already worked with another RedFOX Labs venture: RFOX Games.
Last month, when RFOX Games released its free-to-play, play-to-earn game KOGs: SLAM! in closed beta, it welcomed YGG as a major partner in the launch. During the beta release, 5,000 participants competed for prizes in the form of RFOX tokens, and a significant number of these gamers came from YGG’s roster of scholars.
Even then, YGG saw the opportunity for RFOX Games to carve a significant slice of the play-to-earn market. Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games, had this to say about the collaboration:
“We’re happy to be working with RFOX Games to bring YGG members into the KOGs: SLAM! closed beta. This gives an opportunity for our underserved members to start earning while they move up our scholarship waitlist. Being able to start playing for free and move earnings directly to GCash will massively increase play-to-earn adoption in the Philippines.”
With the newest partnership between RedFOX Labs and YGG, more benefits will be unlocked for both the YGG and RFOX communities.
This is the first article of a three-part series on the newest partnership between RedFOX Labs and YGG.
