To get today’s major games, gaming platforms, and brands to participate in the emerging metaverse. While companies like Activision Blizzard and Take-Two may recognize the potential of open economies and platforms, they are unlikely to sign on to any systems managed by competing platforms, like those of Valve and Epic, because they would present too many strategic and financial risks.
There’s a reason, after all, that most publishers still choose to keep as panama mobile database much of their stack in-house as possible, rather than outsourcing to Unreal or Steamworks. While Disney’s The Mandalorian Season 1 used Epic Games’ Unreal technology for real-time rendering—and received widespread acclaim—Lucasfilm switched to a proprietary engine, Helios, for Season 2. Meanwhile, Pixar’s USD format was adopted simply because it’s open source.
Finally, the token model (i.e., smart contracts) provides the gaming industry with a simple technical solution to one of its most vexing problems: revenue leakage. As discussed earlier in this article, players are tempted to take their assets and equity from game to game. However, many developers make the majority of their revenue by selling players items for use exclusively in their games. Therefore, the ability for players to “buy elsewhere, use here” jeopardizes the business model of game developers. For example, third-party developers may “race to the bottom” on pricing because, unlike game manufacturers, they do not need to recoup the initial development and operating costs of the game. Or perhaps players will stop buying virtual items because they have already bought enough in other games. Or they simply like Developer A’s skins more than Developer B’s, but prefer Developer B’s games to Developer A’s.