Magic Eden Doubles Down On Gaming

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Mark Kennedy & Manuel Olumorin
December 09, 2022

Happy Friday, wishing you a great end to your week. Crypto never sleeps, and neither do we, so we get this loot to your inbox. For today we have

  • A new notch in the royalty wars

  • Magic Eden doubling down on gaming with a CGO

  • A special Christmas Lootbox when you share Lootbox Newsletter

  • The sneakies

Royalty Wars Continues

Remember the NFT royalties debate? The one about whether or not creators should get royalties on secondary transactions.

There's a new notch in the cap for the debate.

We stumbled upon a tweet from @SecretSkellies, patting the back of the @XLabsNFT team for solving the royalty issue everyone is so hot with right now. Naturally, it caught our attention.

Stripping an NFT of its holder benefits until the project has been paid its creator fee. Users can still freely trade their NFT and miss out on holder benefits if they choose not to pay the royalties. A certain win for team "pay royalties".

Now, this only affects transactions after the announcement so NFTs bought with unpaid royalties prior can stake as usual.

The tweet wasn't met with complete joy, as some users pointed out that projects would still miss out on transactions before the very last sale, which may also have been traded royalty-free. Good point on this one. This solution doesn't solve the problem but is a step in the direction that favours creators getting royalties.

Our take

This could be a potential solution to enforcing royalty payments for game projects that make money on secondary transactions. Restricting content access or certain benefits to NFTs with unpaid NFTs. They would have to contend with the tradeoff that comes with a decision like this.

Obviously, I stand with the creators making the decision on the royalties issue, especially if they provide ongoing benefits. It takes money to provide the benefits.

Magic Eden Hires Star Chief Gaming Officer

Magic Eden is doubling down on gaming!

This week they announced the hiring of Chris Akhavan as their first Chief Gaming Officer. The announcement stated Chris will be responsible for Magic Eden's gaming partnerships, and enhancing the creator/developer experience with Magic Eden's platform. Magic Eden believes that web3 gaming is a multi-billion dollar yearly trend in the making.

Who Is Chris?

Chris has a wealth of experience across the gaming sector. Most notably, Chris was the Chief Revenue Officer of Glu Mobile, a once-struggling early mobile game developer. Chris helped turn them into a leading mobile free-to-play studio, which was eventually acquired by EA for $2.4 Billion. He even cut his teeth as a game tester many years back.

Chris isn't just a web2 guy, though. He has chops in web3 too. Check out his stack.

  • Chief Business Officer at Forte, now an Advisor

  • Advisor at Game7

Chris firmly believes in user-owned assets and Web3 as the future of gaming. I mean, check out what he said.

"As a lifelong gamer, I truly believe the game industry is going to be transformed by placing ownership in the hands of players."

Chris Akhavan - Chief Gaming Officer of Magic Eden

Magic Eden seems pretty jazzed about the acquisition of Mr. Akhavan as well. Their COO had this to say about Chris, and his role at Magic Eden.

"Chris is going to take us places. He's got that special sauce that only a few people in the world have, coming from traditional gaming while also being intimately familiar with blockchain technology through his experiences at Tapjoy, Glu, Electronic Arts, Forte, and Game7."

Zhuoxun Yin - COO of Magic Eden

The Sneaky News You May Have Missed

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