Shane Kim, Wemade Tree’s CEO. Source: Wemade Tree.

When it concerns fast- growing companies, extremely couple of can compare the gaming market.

Per information assembled by Newzoo, there were over 2.5 billion video players worldwide in2016 Simply what 4 years and the coronavirus pandemic have actually done to these figures is anybody’s guess. It would be safe to presume that time and lockdown-driven dullness have actually driven up the worth of this market yet even more.

When North America,

Gaming’s center was. In current years its center of balance has actually moved to East Asia.

Newzoo information likewise shows that the Asia Pacific area’s gaming market income in 2017 was a cool USD 51.2 billion– around the very same size as the amount of The United States and Canada’s, Europe, the Middle East and Africa’s combined overall.

The East Asian market may be profitable, however it is likewise one of the most competitive markets on earth.

In this merciless world– full of tight policies, savage copyright legal representatives and the mangled remains of business who stopped working to move with the times– acquiring an one-upmanship is whatever. It’s high-stakes 4-D chess. And if you are not numerous actions ahead of your opponent, your business empire might end up being a stack of steaming debris while your competitors cruise off into the sundown.

That is why numerous business in this ultra-competitive field have actually chosen to wager big on blockchain technology– confident that tokenized and/or decentralized gaming will assist them remain appropriate while their opponents stay with soon- to-be-obsolete business designs.

South Korea’s Wemade, established in 2000, has actually chosen to pursue blockchain hard. Much so, in reality, that it has actually formed its own blockchain subsidiary, Wemade Tree— and back it to the hilt.

Wemade built much of its fortune on the success of its Legends of Mir PC series, a significant money- spinner throughout the continent. Per
existing figures, Wemade’s market capitalization is around USD 500 million. A big wedge of that money is now being raked into blockchain-powered business.

Shane Kim, Wemade Tree’s CEO, informed Cryptonews.com that his company has the “utmost support” from Wemade head office.

“In the gaming industry, you need to be agile and fast-moving. Being too big can be a drawback. It makes sense to have a separate subsidiary devoted to blockchain gaming as it is such a fast-growing sector. The idea is to let Wemade Tree focus entirely on blockchain, and the other subsidiaries focus on their core businesses,” he stated.

Effective partners

Although big- name game releases are all still in the pipelines, the business neighborhood can smell something quite significant is cooking in the recently established business’s kitchen area, revolving mostly around its WEMIX blockchain platform.

Business partners consist of the likes of Samsung Previously this year, Wemade Tree ended up being the first gaming business in the world to launch a blockchain-powered mobile phone. Well, 3 smart devices, to be accurate.

As formerly reported, these are scandal sheet personalized variations of the Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra that come pre-loaded with Wemade Tree’s WEMIX crypto wallet, along with an app that tracks deals of WEMIX’s currently unlisted (and eponymous) token.

Kim stated of the collaboration,

“This is probably the first-ever fully-fledged case of collaboration between the blockchain gaming industry and the smartphone sector.”

Samsung is not the only headline-grabbing company that has actually taken an active interest in Wemade Tree’s big blockchain strategies.

The business has actually likewise formed a business alliance with chat app giant Kakao (operator of the Klaytn blockchain platform), along with South Korea’s response to Google, Naver Chinese gaming heavyweight Longtu is likewise onboard.

In reality, Longtu’s participation got more severe this year when the Chinese company got 10% of Wemade Tree’s stock for around USD 3.3 million.

Kim specified that the Longtu offer represents more than simply a money injection, including, that the relocation “means more to us in terms of partnership expansions.” He added that “many of Longtu’s IP games will come onboard with WEMIX.”

Legend of Mir‘s appeal is still high in China. Kim kept in mind that because China is the world’s biggest game market and Wemade has the Legend of Mir IP– the biggest and best IP in the market– they are constantly thinking about Chinese market patterns.

It might come as not a surprise, then, to find out that a blockchain-powered Legend of Mir title is on its method.

Kim states,

” WEMIX’s second or 3rd game will utilize the Legend of Mir IP. With its previous exceptional accomplishments in the Chinese market, our company believe it can attract the attention of [Chinese] players.”

With all these backers and a money- minting series of games that enjoy sky-high appeal in one of the world’s greatest economies, certainly it is simply a matter of “if you build it, people will come” for Wemade Tree? , if only life were that easy..

Laws, policies, policies

The gaming sector has won itself an unenviable reputation as being one of the most extremely policed of South Korea’s business sectors (in spite of the reality that it is likewise one of the most profitable).

Laws are likewise the name of the game in the crypto world. A partial crypto crackdown that prohibited preliminary coin offerings (ICOs) and presented real-name banking policies for crypto exchange users shook the nascent crypto and blockchain sectors to their very core back in early 2018.

And blockchain gaming? Well, things left to a really inauspicious start when the South Korean Game Score and Administration Committee (GRAC) guard dog in 2015 declined to release a score to Infinity Star, a game developed by domestic company NodeBrick

The GRAC’s thinking was that Infinity Star uses of Ethereum ERC 721 Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which it specified might be traded for money on the blockchain network.

In South Korea, no ranking suggests no circulation.

However Kim stated that he is undaunted by the concept of needing to fulfill numerous compliance targets. And like most South Korean blockchain lovers, he is positive about big changes on the horizon– especially in a post- COVID-19 economy where Seoul will be wanting to open business opportunities, not close them.

The Infinity Star case might have been an obstacle, however Kim hinted that it is not most likely to thwart the sector’s growth.

He specified,

“Regulations will change in parallel with industry development and it will move in a direction that will prove to be comparatively moderate.”

In spite of the favorable talk, it appears that Wemade Tree is not prepared to take any possibilities– with an overseas- based subsidiary currently in location. Kim firmly insisted that WEMIX’s target clients are global, instead of domestic.

“South Korean regulation isn’t a great obstacle for us. That’s why we set up a subsidiary in Singapore, and we will target the global market,” he stated.

A screenshot from the first Wemade Tree WEMIX release, BirdTornado, that is slated for release “at the end of this month.” Source Wemade Tree.

And although Kim declared that WEMIX and its wallet will “not need to register as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP)” under brand-new South Korean legal modifications that will enter force next year, due to the fact that the platform “is not related to fiat,” it appears his business is taking no possibilities.

The business is establishing internal control and security systems that will utilize comparable requirements to those utilized by financial organizations.

However once again, gaming business understand they need to be prepared for anything. Kim stated that his company is preparing to execute VASP-compliant Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money Laundering (KYC and AML) policies anyhow, simply “in case it becomes necessary.”

And when it comes to gaming policies? Kim is an optimist here, too.

He stated,

“Regulation of the gaming sector has been strengthened in recent years. But most recently, the government is actually relaxing its stance.”

He added that the federal government is actively “deregulating” the gaming market and is getting rid of barriers “one by one.”

“The gaming industry is important in South Korea, accounting for 67% of the country’s media exports and 8.8% of the national trade surplus. As the government plans to focus on fostering digital-based contact-free industries in the future, we expect the gaming industry to benefit from this, too. Cryptocurrency and blockchain regulations will also be eased in the long term,” he stated.

And what of the future? Blockchain games are still to take a specific niche on their own, in South Korea and in other places, in spite of years of buzz.

Policy is simply one part of the formula: Need likewise requires to grow in the gaming neighborhood.

This too will follow, stated Kim. He kept in mind,

“Incentive-based play patterns, asset trading and inflation are mechanisms that exist in existing games. So gamers are ready to embrace blockchain games. And that will lead to a rise in demand.”

Great future?

What do the next couple of years have in store for blockchain gaming?

Having actually worked for some of South Korea’s greatest IT business for the past twenty years, Kim stated it is “impossible to predict the future.”

However whatever tomorrow looks like, he suggested, blockchain will play an essential role.

He concluded,

“What we can say is that blockchain technology will still be in use in 10 years. And there will be an industry built around it. It is uncertain to predict the size of that industry. But since blockchain is a valuable form of technology, it will certainly have found usage scenarios in multiple sectors. By then, the technology – as well as the industry – will have entered maturity.”

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