In spite of the regulatory obstacles, Sky Mavis, the company that is responsible for the Play-to-Earn (P2E) heavyweight Axie Infinity, is planning to “double down” in South Korea and ramp up acceptance.
Jeffrey Zirlin, the co-founder of Sky Mavis and growth lead, on August 9 at Korea Blockchain Week, that despite the fact that the domestic ban on P2E games is still in effect, the “Korean market is one of the most important gaming markets in the world, and we have tons of players in South Korea.”
Zirlin noted that the company is presently looking into methods to modify the Axie Infinity game so that it is more appealing to the company’s audience of Korean gamers:
“I believe you are aware that we wish to increase our bet. To give you an example, we want to localize, but I assume most Koreans aren’t fluent in English. Therefore, there are a great deal of obstacles in the way of really putting the game into the hands of players in Korea.”
“However, a significant number of our best players on the leaderboard are of Korean descent […] He continued by saying that Koreans are some of the top players in the world.”
As a direct consequence of the stringent anti-gambling rules in place, the South Korean Game Rating & Administration Committee does not permit the release of any local blockchain P2E games. Additionally, in December, the government took action to prevent Google Play as well as the Apple Store from listing these types of games in the Korean market.
“It is still very early in terms of the rules,” she said. Zirlin pointed out that “it’s similar to the app stores where you know, it’s going to be a process of negotiation and education,” and he went on to say that he hopes the widespread adoption of P2E will be sufficient to convince the government to ease up on its overly restrictive regulation in the future:
“It’s basically Uber as a method, is that correct? They just launched the product and distributed it to as many people as they could, and as soon as they reached a critical mass, the authorities were forced to comply with the new rules.”
Ambitious Axie Infinity project
The Axie Infinity project is currently in the early access stage, and there is no app available for download on either Google Play or the Apple Store as of yet. As per Active Player, the game had approximately 766,000 people who logged in to play the game last month. This is a significant drop from the peak of 2.7 million players that was reported in January of this year.
As things stand, Axie Infinity is looking to increase adoption, both in Korea and around the world, by enhancing the quality of the gaming experience and expanding the scope of its ecosystem through the addition of new battle modes such as Origin, which had more than 600,000 sign ups as of the middle of June.
“Right present, we are concentrating primarily on origin. Therefore, expanding that and making it more immersive, bringing in vertical advancements such as runes and charms and body part improvements to act as sustainable sinks (burning processes) for tokens, and making it more fun are all things that need to be done.
“Origin vitally comes with three free beginning Axies (NFT characters) so that people can fall in love with the game [without having to] make any economic or financial decisions,” he added. This allows people to fall in love with the game “without having to” make any economic or financial decisions.