ICE Merge: Decentral Games Implements a Plan you Definitely Wants to Know

Decentral Games is implementing a plan that would see ICE token emissions drop by 55%. Yes, you read it right, the play & own Metaverse studio behind ICE Poker, Decentraland's most popular gaming venue is changing the type of rewards obtained by delegated players who are renting the wearable NFTs required for joining the game. From now on, instead of direct ICE rewards, they will obtain "banked ICE" which can be used to purchase wearables and shine for ICE Poker Sit-n-Go, which allow them to join its tournaments.

So, does the change affect players who own their wearables? Absolutely not, because Banked ICE offers a direct path to ownership of NFTs. This comes as part of a shift from a Play-to-Earn model to Play & Own, giving players a path to owning assets themselves.

This will inevitably shift the makeup of the player base, but the goal is to make it more player-owner based, bringing committed, long-term players who can hone their craft in ICE Poker.

What is ICE Poker?

Decentral Games' ICE Poker was launched in October 2021. The game allows players to earn tokens by playing for ranking on the leaderboard.

The team believes that open metaverse will be the next evolution of the internet, and Decentral Games aims to allow anyone to earn from playing familiar games like poker.

This new change will have a positive impact on ICE dynamics, leaving only effective token sinks to generate value for holders. Thanks to the wearables and shine system, the ICE Poker ecosystem can sustain a balanced player economy, where burns are consistently higher than new emissions.

"The existing play-to-earn model is broken. While offering limitless rewards to those that have invested nothing can be incredible for bootstrapping player liquidity, they are unsustainable. We've seen this with nearly every major GameFi project that kept this model. We're taking a different approach. Our focus is on the long term and it centers on enabling our players to own in-game assets through their gameplay while managing the token emissions we create so that the player base can scale without issue. This is what's going to set us apart over the next 12-18 months," said Matthew Howells-Barby, CMO at Decentral Games.

Reflections of Decentral Games on Decentraland

Decentraland has gained a lot of traffic due to Decentral Games' poker room, giving Decentraland's metaverse a utility. But there is still much for us to think about.

First, most GameFi games have a prohibitively high barrier to entry. The play-to-earn model has become pay-to-play-to-earn.

The cheapest NFT in Decentral Games costs $3,700, compared to the price of $0.09 for ICE. Players need to mint at least 40,000 to make back the money. And in Decentral Games, it is not always possible to earn ICE by "hard work", there is a lot of luck involved.

About Decentral Games

Decentral Games is a leading metaverse gaming company. They build games and social experiences in the metaverse that reach hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. Its flagship product, ICE Poker, accounts for more than 60% of all daily active users in Decentraland.