The gaming industry is worth billions of dollars. We’ve all played games at some point in our lives, whether it’s Super Mario, GTA, NFS, Temple Run, Candy Crush, COD, Fortnite, or Assassin’s Creed. The list goes on and on. And, without a doubt, the industry has progressed tremendously, from graphics to execution to user experience.
But that doesn’t imply it’s now flawless. There are a few flaws with traditional gaming that are yet to be fixed. This is where Web 3.0 jumps in.
Web 3.0 offers a very unique decentralized and ownership approach that has the potential to change the games market and bring about a massive revolution if both industries team up.
Valist is here to help form this incredible team by providing a platform to publish, monetize, and distribute your games in a decentralized manner.
Understanding the problems
Though traditional gaming has grown in many areas, it is still not that refined when it comes to the publishing and distribution of games. The problems are not limited to the people who purchase the games, but also to the indie developers who spend hours developing, building, planning, and making the games. Let us analyze the problems from both perspectives.
For a gamer …
If you are a gamer, you are probably a fan of digital assets and in-game material. These assets are easily purchased using fiat and can be used in games to level up your character, among other things. However, purchasing these assets does not mean that you own them. Strange, you paid yet still don’t have complete ownership? Exactly! You merely have a license, or, in other words, “a nod” to use them.
Not only that but because everything is stored on a centralized server, all of your information and assets are under the jurisdiction of a single organization. This is a far bigger issue than most people realize. Imagine waking up one day to play your game only to find that the character you’ve been working on for so long no longer has those abilities. Isn’t it terrifying? This happened to Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. Being centralized also gives hackers a sweet chance to attack system flaws, which can potentially result in many users losing assets or even their accounts.
For a developer …
Every indie game developer understands how many mugs of coffee and hours of bug-fixing are required to build the ideal game. When you have your perfect game in front of you and want the rest of the world to play it, you go to platforms like Steam only to find that it will cost a lot of money and time before you can show it to the public.
”Choosing where to publish your game is just as crucial as creating it.”
Let us show you why.
1. Publishing Price
On platforms such as Steam, you must pay publishing costs in order to release your game. These fees are often approximately $100, and while they can be recovered after you produce sufficient revenue, you must still pay before your game can be shown to the public. On the other hand, with a decentralized platform like Valist, you can say goodbye to such fees. All you have to do is create an account, publish your game, and your game is ready for the world.
2. Hosting Charges
Another advantage of decentralized publishing is that it reduces the costs associated with hosting and the fees required to ship and grow dApps and games.
Apps like Steam charge 30%, but the Valist protocol charges a reasonable web3-enabled marketplace price of 2.5% percent. This is to cover all of the storage, meta-transaction fees, and development of the protocol. Valist is also rolling out an optional 2.5% “Community Treasury” fee that you can enable to contribute to public goods and indie game/app funding — as well as potentially receive some of this yourself if you get enough support from the Valist Community! (Expect an announcement about this in the near future 🤭)
3. Distributed Storage and Monetization
Valist stores your data on networks with plenty of storage space, such as IPFS and Filecoin. Instead of depending on a payment processor, Software Licenses can be produced as NFTs employing peer-to-peer payments.
This means that you can always publish and access your game, you don’t need permission from a centralized authority to do so!
4. It’s You and Your Audience ❤
Being an indie developer is difficult, and when the burden of additional fees and publishing costs hits, it may be demoralizing. We wish to empower indie developers through decentralization.
Without a doubt, centralized platforms have increased exposure for the indie dev community, but ironically they have also taken away their independence to some extent.
With Valist, we seek to empower indie developers by connecting them directly to their audiences and allowing them to publish freely.
If you are an indie developer who wants the support and freedom you deserve and an active community that is ready to help you during your game-developing journey, you are always welcome to publish on valist.io, feel free to jump on our discord we’ll love to hang out with you and get to know you and your project. and if you are a gamer, keep an eye out for our discover page. You might find your next favorite game there. 👀