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Scuti and Reality Gaming Group have teamed up to deliver a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace through Scuti’s gCommerce platform. This enables game developers and publishers to sell their own NFTs inside the stores of their games.
The new NFT feature is an addition to Scuti‘s platform, which helps gamers earn rewards while playing games and then use those rewards to buy real-world goods from a store embedded inside them.
Scuti’s founders believe that monetization is broken in games, as they say it annoys gamers. The popular forms of monetization in games today will slow players down by forcing them to grind. It puts paywalls in front of them, makes them watch video ads they don’t care about, or fools them into buying goods that don’t really have much value.
Scuti says that all game developers need to do for this tech to work is add the button; the company will handle the rest. It runs the store, purchasing, supply chain management, fulfillment, data, analytics, upselling, merchandising, promotions, and more. Players can hit the Scuti button and spend what they earn in-game on real-world merchandise, like a pair of shoes. Scuti shows them the stuff that the people say they like.
Scuti creates a button in a corner of the game lobby or main menu, and it is passive so that it doesn’t consume resources during gameplay. Players must opt-in to access the store and rewards, which it’s dubbed “Scutis.” The gamer can shop and stay inside the game’s lobby or main menu while doing so. The ads within the store are compliant with the Internet Advertising Bureau.
The NFT craze
Above: Scuti puts a whole real-world e-commerce store in a game.
Scuti has jumped on the NFT bandwagon to allow game developers and publishers to tap directly into huge consumer demand for NFTs through its gCommerce SDK, giving players the capability to own, sell and trade digital assets. NFTs have exploded in other applications such as art, sports collectibles, and music. NBA Top Shot (a digital take on collectible basketball cards) is one example. Built by Dapper Labs, NBA Top Shot has surpassed $540 million in sales, just six months after going public. And an NFT digital collage by the artist Beeple sold at Christie’s for $69.3 million. Gaming has a couple of new unicorns, or startups valued at $1 billion, in Animoca Brands and Forte. NFTs are now selling at a rate of $247.8 million a month, though the initial hype around NFTs is dying down.
As the world’s first gCommerce platform, Scuti offers what it claims is a seamless player experience and the potential for all game makers to tap into new markets (gCommerce and NFTs) through one software development kit (SDK) designed to monetize and improve every player’s experience.
The partnership with RGG will see Scuti-enabled games reach new heights, optimizing player engagement and retention through the deployment of bespoke NFT marketplaces, the companies said.
These marketplaces, powered by RGG’s Digital Asset Trading (DAT) Platform, will enable players to buy in-game assets with full, true digital ownership, all without ever leaving their games, thanks to the power of the blockchain.
Helping game devs
Above: Scuti lets gamers buy from inside a game.
Tony Pearce, cofounder of Reality Gaming Group, said in a statement that the partnership with Scuti is the start of a wider shift for the games market. He said Scuti’s unique position as an in-lobby, cross-platform marketplace is suited to take advantage of blockchain technology, where will we see ecommerce, real-world items, and tokenized, in-game assets begin to interact with each other like never before.
Nicholas Longano, CEO of Scuti, said in a statement that each player’s experience will their games will become more enduring as a result of the engagement that comes from NFTs and in-game stores. The partners combine RGG’s expertise in blockchain and NFT marketplaces with Scuti’s gCommerce platform. This partnership will lead to the creation of brand-new revenue streams for all game makers, enhanced game experiences for players, and the seamless participation by brands, all through one SDK, he said.
The technology used to drive the NFT marketplace is RRG’s proprietary DAT platform which has been built from the ground-up over the last three years, Scuti and Reality Gaming Group said. The platform has been designed with flexibility in mind, which means that Scuti can offer publishers and developers a complete NFT marketplace solution that’s both bespoke to their needs and community but very fast and easy integrate through its platform and maintain.
RRG’s system is already live over at Doctor Who: Worlds Apart, an NFT based digital trading card game where every card is minted as its own NFT and sellable on a marketplace to other players, creating true digital ownership in the trading card market for the very first time. Later next month through Scuti’s integration, 20 Below Games’ Rock Out game.
In 2019, RRG moved from the Ethereum blockchain onto their own “sidechain”, which allows them to make their own changes, updates, and improvements while still following the original vision of blockchain integrated gaming and true ownership of digital, in-game assets. Another huge benefit of the sidechain is that it uses much less energy than the Ethereum mainnet, which critically means zero gas fees through the Scuti platform. RRG be integrating with layer 2 networks with Polygon later this year to further reduce energy costs.
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