The moment GW/EA get involved, the moment money gets involved. And the moment public interest will plummet.mryay wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 8:27 pm Now the elephant in the room is: would the RoR community have any weight in taking the discussion to Games Workshop and Gamebryo|EA to allow a form of funding for a non-profit organization?
I mean I would tip for paying the team from time to time. Contributors highly deserve it.
The team could ask for state/regional funding (AFAIK servers run in EU, aren't they?)
Even, maybe, think about a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) where they could raise community funding (using crypto utility tokens) with voting rights about the RoR next batch of skins, pocket items, armor, weapons, class rework, you name it.
/Salute
Swizz
The reason RoR is so popular with such a high CCU (yes, 900-1200 online in peak hours is a LOT compared to most games-as-a-service titles) is because it's free without any additional caost.
The moment you add payments in any way - be they DAO or Blockchain supported, or state/regional funding, or MTX - the moment the product effectively stops being seen as 'free' - balance changes become 'pay to balance', subscriptions become 'pay to access', and the current state of the game provides effectively unlimited access for free. No MTX, no crypto, no purchase price or sub fee.
Even professionally, I don't think crypto has any right being near games - there is only one case where it could help, and it's with paying people making mods for an official game that results in people needing to sign legally binding agreements and cutting checks - like Roblox pays their developers right now. Roblox is the type of company that would benefit from crypto, not a bunch of hobbyists.
None of those Web3 situations will ever be favorable to volunteers, and would squarely force GW's hands, as they now can say "someone is profiting off of our game with Web3 technology" - and even if it's decentralized, the game itself is not, and would ultimately feel the wrath of GW and co swiftly.
There would be no one from this community defending any blockchain/NFT/Web3 tech - in fact, I would imagine they'd cheer GW on to shut the project down swiftly. Without the community's support, the fans working on the project would be making it for themselves - not for the love of the game - and it would be plainly obvious to see.
Even if you were to go the 'legal route', and charge a sub, or monetize with microtransactions... F2P or Box/Sub or Sub (Web2) would fail as well, as they currently do not pay money for this title, and effectively charging for this game would cut it off for a majority of people who weren't previously paying.
Web3 wouldn't solve an issue here, it wouldn't provide a method in which players could have access to something they wouldn't before - it would further complicate the above issue with subscriptions or f2p, be unfavorable, etc. Imagine if MassivelyOP got wind of the news that their favorite rogue server started integrating blockchain - it'd be a death sentence politically and offer nothing interesting that the US dollar can't already provide.
I've had to explain to many C-level execs, recruiters, etc over the last few years that blockchain has far too many bad actors, and I would have to decline any role in which a financial incentive is made first, and a game second - there's no guarantee they will have money to pay me upfront if they are involved with Web3/Blockchain.
There is one exclusion where blockchain can be useful, but it's for commercial purposes, and it's no different than what Steam, Roblox, and soon to be Fortnite is doing fundamentally - taking a cut off the top of mod sales, and paying people in one of the many standardized cryptocurrency that they can immediately cash out into USD.
This will avoid the legal red tape associated with paying people as contractors (or 1099-MISC in the US) - by doing so, you offload the responsibility to the creator cashing out the crypto asset yearly, instead of the company filing and reporting taxes or having players reveal their legal identity - and you're able to pay players for their creations without involving SWIFT-based payment processors like Paypal, Venmo, Cashapp, etc.