Hello everyone! Welcome to the 232nd edition of the PlayToEarn newsletter.

We’re trying out a new format this week. Respond to the poll at the end of this newsletter to let us know what you think!

Top Trending games on PlayToEarn

No Respect I Tells Ya!

Twitter is abuzz with the recent scandal involving Dr Disrespect, a well-known game streamer and co-founder of Midnight Society, the studio behind Deadrop, a web3 FPS currently in development.

Apparently, back in 2020, Dr Disrespect was banned for life from Twitch. At the time there was much speculation as to why, though neither side revealed many details.

But, this week, two former Twitch employees claimed that the ban was due to DD, known as Guy Beahm in real-life, sexting with a minor through a feature known as Twitter Whispers. The other two Midnight Society co-founders quickly began an investigation and even more quickly dropped their association with Dr Disrespect entirely!

DD, or Guy Beahm as he’s known in real-life, went on Twitter to give his side of the story, saying that he did have some inappropriate messaging with a minor, but staunchly defended his virtue, claiming that he did nothing illegal. Which may technically true. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t wrong.

And given the severity of the repercussions from those with more insight into what actually happened, it would seem those must have been some extremely inappropriate texts!

Midnight Society has received quite a bit of backlash. With some even claiming that the Deadrop project is now dead itself! And Dr Disrespect has decided to take a little ‘vaction’, though he claims he will be back! It will be interesting to see what fallout remains from this incident in a few weeks.

Play to Earn Never Died! It was just shamed into hiding its face for a while!

In 2021 play to earn was hot. The games themselves weren’t really much to speak of, but token values, and NFT speculation, and game rewards made a lot of money for a lot of people!

But then, the bottom dropped out of the market. And all of those game assets and tokens dropped in value... and kept dropping! In fact, many game studios never made it out of the bear market, leaving their NFT and token holders out in the cold.

And for a while, many developers just stop using the term ‘play to earn’ and even reduced their focus on NFTs and web3 aspects!

Some of this was just for show, and instead we started seeing terminology such as ‘play and earn’ or ‘build and earn’. And, of course, there’s this year’s hot buzz-term, ‘play to airdrop’!

Whatever you want to call it, the ability to earn an income by playing games is still around. And in fact, the games are better than ever! You can earn from beating other players in head to head competitions, by crafting valuable items and selling them, participating in play to airdrop campaigns, and more! Now, you won’t necessarily make a living wage by playing games (though some people certainly do), but the days of having your value as a player recognized are here. And I don’t think that idea will ever fade away.

Digital IDs, the future of online identity?

Digital Identification is another hot item in web3 gaming, and the blockchain space in general.

The current leaders of this push seem to the Immutable, with their Immutable Passport, and Animoca Brands with their Moca IDs.

And while being able to login to multiple sites and apps with a single login isn’t new, these blockchain-oriented solution are also creating built-in wallets, providing additional web3 utility.

Now, of course, many in the blockchain space are big on privacy and decentralization, so not everyone is excited about the concept of universal digital IDs. But, with the onboarding of web2 players a priority for many game development studios, digital IDs are definitely here to stay!

Moving Money: Funding, Tokenomics, and other related stories from web3 gaming

Top News Stories in Web3 Gaming This Week

Phase 1 of the Blast airdrop goes live! Participants can claim their Blast, and anyone can start gathering points for phase 2 of the airdrop just by bridgings funds to the Blast network! And surprisingly, the value of BLAST tokens is pretty much the same as it was when trading first opened!

Influence officially launched on June 27th, opening up this Eve Online-type web3 space sim for permanent access. Since Influence is a player-run MMO, there won’t be any seasons or resets. Just players doing their thing in space!

MetalCore opened up claims for their MCG token this week. Claims are available both on the Ethereum chain and on Immutable zkEVM, based on how you earned your tokens. Read all about the MetalCore economy to learn about the use-cases for MCG.

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