The massive MapleStory franchise enters Web3 with Polygon, a dedicated Supernet on the Ethereum scaling network.
Nexon Taps Polygon for NFT Game MapleStory Universe
One of Asia’s largest game publishers Nexon announced Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco that it is creating a new Web3 game based on the popular pixelated 2D role-playing game franchise called MapleStory Universe, and has created a private supernet with Polygon for the new game.
MapleStory is Nexon’s long-standing success story. The game has grossed over $4 billion in revenue to date, the company announced earlier this year and to date he has amassed over 180 million registered users. The game’s Steam page lists players totaling over 260 million. Рolygon Supernet of the upcoming PC game will allow Neхon to have its own “dedicated application chain,” Urwit Goel, vice president of global game and platform development at Polygon Labs, told Decrypt.
Supernets in Рolygon are similar to subnets in Avalanche in that they provide dedicated sub-networks to individual projects, for example. They give developers some customization options and insulate decentralized apps (dapps) and games from potential performance issues on the wider public network. The МapleStory Universe was announced last year with no release date confirmed yet. However, Goel said there will be no pre-sale of NFTs and that players can earn items as NFTs just by playing the game.
МapleStory Universe is an NFT-centric game. In other words, tokenized assets play an important role in the game itself and can be traded or transferred through the game’s marketplace. Neхon told Decrypt that the МapleStory Universe will finally have its own crypto token as well, but the details of which have not been finalized.
“We plan on issuing our unique coin, and specific details about this will be revealed later with our tokenomics,” the game studio said.
Neхon is both a South Korean and a Japanese company, but generates most of its sales in the Korean market. According to Polygon Labs’ Goel, it’s not the only South Korean studio leaning towards Web3.
“Korea has been by far the leader from a developer standpoint. If you look at the top 10 gaming companies in Korea, eight out of 10 have publicly stated that they’re building something on the blockchain, which is very unique globally,” Goel said.
Other major South Korean game publishers working on Web3 projects include NCSoft and Netmarble, both of which are built on the fast-growing blockchain network Sui. Meanwhile, Krafton, creator of the popular shooter series PUBG: Battlegrounds, has been working on a variety of blockchain initiatives, including a partnership with Solana Labs.
Source
Check out more of our latest news here
Leave a comment