Gm beautiful people! To those of you who are at Token2049 and have been through Tokyo and Seoul beforehand - we salute you, and you’re nearly home. Not forgetting about the other side of the world, if you haven’t checked it out yet, we wrote up some thoughts on the Framework gaming talk at Permissionless. (Micheal & Vance - Tom’s still waiting for that LinkedIn connection).

Anyways, you know the drill. Three stories, change log, and other news. Here’s today’s slate:

• Unity Impose New Fees

• Change Log

• Pixels On Ronin

• Sony Enters the Chat

• Other News

Unity Impose New Fees

Unity, one of the leading game engine companies, has announced a new runtime fee effective from 1st January 2024, based on game installs. This decision, coupled with the discontinuation of the Unity Plus subscription, has, of course, not hit well with the developer community. The fee applies after meeting specific revenue and install count thresholds, with rates varying by product version and region. For instance, Unity Personal users could be charged up to $0.20 per install. The community’s primary concerns include the unpredictability of the new fee structure and the potential for abuse with install-based fees.

The builder community may have been blindsided, but it’s all good because Unity execs were offloading shares full Pelosi style in the run-up to the announcement. This move also seems to be a full 180 on their 2019 commitment not to charge royalties. While many developers are contemplating moving to rival engines like Unreal, the cost-benefit analysis remains a topic of debate.

Since the original announcement, Unity has ‘softened’ its stance on the changes. With the fee applying on a per-install basis, the initial announcement model would see charges to game developers if reinstalling after deleting the game or installing to multiple devices. Bear in mind that this applies to applications, including mobile games. Like me, I’m sure many of you have culled apps just to reinstall, play, and get bored just to continue that cycle over and over. The softened stance means that a charge will only apply to the initial install but is still far way off the idyllic engine that so many developers have chosen as their home.

Change Log

• God’s Unchained launched Sealed Mode, a new game mode that lets you build decks from a random card pool to win exclusive rewards.

• Chumbi Valley is transitioning from a dual token to a single token economy, focusing efforts on CHMB and phasing out LSTS.

• Spider Tanks Arena Patch 1.4.0 is live with updates to match weights, views, and Drop Pods.

• Gala Games’ Last Expedition launched early access for NFT holders.

• BurgerCities enters a new season with six leaderboards and a prize pool of 300k BURGER.

• Alien Worlds updated its NFT Outpost UI, changed NFT Points to Shards, and added new features surrounding Shards, like fusing.

• Arena of Faith Pioneer Avatar NFT Mint is going on now.

Pixels on Ronin

Pixels announced a transition from Polygon to Sky Mavis’ Ronin Network. The move takes one of the top games on Polygon with 1.5M transactions/month and 100k MAU to the home of Axie Infinity.

During a following AMA, Pixels CEO Luke Barwikowski stated that the decision to move to Ronin came from conversations with Jiho and the desire to build alongside Sky Mavis to build a better space for gaming. To Barwikowski, the success of Axie Infinity demonstrated that the team’s experience and success in the space showed a more promising future for web3 gaming on Ronin. The response was similar to the one CyberKongz gave following the same transition.

Although Ronin has seen success in Axie Infinity, Polygon recently overtook BNB Chain as the largest blockchain by number of gaming titles. Pixel’s transition comes ahead of the launch of Immutable zkEVM, a gaming-focus blockchain collaboration between Polygon and Immutable.

Sony Enters the Chat

Sony is the latest web2 gaming company to enter web3. Early this week, Sony Network Communication, a subsidiary of the everything tech company Sony, and Startale Labs announced a joint partnership to develop a blockchain. The announcement comes about three months after Startale Labs received $3.5M in seed funding from Sony to build the infrastructure for broader web3 adoption.

Startale Labs is a spin-out company of the Astar Foundation, the non-profit organization developing the Polkadot-based, EVM-compatible Astar Network. Sony reportedly owns 90% of the venture, while Startale owns 10%.

The close connection between Astar Network and Sony through Startale has previously led to the launch of an incubation program between the two that’s funded a total of 19 crypto projects since its launch four months ago. It’s unclear if Sony will work with Astar, through Startale, to develop web3 games, but the company has stated that it will leverage its experience in areas like IoT and AI to further the efforts of Startale.

Other News

• The Shrapnel development team decided not to let US players cash out from the game in response to regulatory uncertainty.

• Oasys launched the alpha version of its gaming wallet, Oasys Passport.

• Scallop partnered with Elfin Games to provide DeFi and asset management integrations into Elfin titles.

• Ancient8 launched Anicent8 Chain: an Ethereum L2 built for gaming.

• Oasys partnered with AGLD DAO, bringing AGLD tokens and Autonomous Worlds (AW) infrastructure to Oasys.

• Immutable partnered with My NFT Wars: Riftwardens to onboard the strategy and RPG game.

• Gensokishi Online Meta World partnered with Square Enix on its upcoming Symbiogenesis campaign.

• Nakamigos’ upcoming Cloaks NFTs will grant you a “worldwide gaming license” to allow developers to make games for them.

• Wemade announced a web3-powered golf tournament, WEMIX CHAMPIONSHIP, set for November 18.