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Buidler DAO: Web3 talent and project incubator
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Translation: @wenchuan
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Typesetting: @Coucou
Note: The article only represents personal views and does not constitute investment advice.
Recently, Valve Software, the operating company of Steam, the world's largest gaming platform, announced that it has added a rule for games that use blockchain technology or allow users to exchange cryptocurrencies or NFTs. Available in the Getting Started Guide. We look beyond players and pay more attention to the trends here. These restrictions not only affect game developers and players on the platform, but also affect the business model of the game industry and game innovation in the Web3 field. The guests we invited are Jonathan Lai and Eddy Lazzarin, partners of a16Z.
The full text is 2466 words, and the estimated reading time is 6 minutes.
dialogue
Moderator: John will first talk about the importance of Steam, Eddy will introduce the significance of the Web3 movement, and then delve into the specific details and impact.
Jonathan Lai: Steam is a digital distribution platform that has a desktop client that users download to their computers and then use it to play games. At the same time, you can also click to enter the store, where games from all over the world are available for purchase. It has more than 120 million monthly active users on Steam and owns popular games such as "Counter-Strike", "Team Fortress", and "Dota2". Steam is very friendly to game developers because they no longer need to go to a publisher to release their games. Just create a developer account on Steam, upload an executable file, and click a few buttons, and the game can be sold to people around the world. Think of Steam as an app store or a PC games store.
Moderator: Steam is the leader in the gaming field. Why is it in the news now? what does that mean?
Jonathan Lai : This is a big signal for the market. Steam has a good reputation in the game developer community. It is the first open source and most game developer friendly company. Many software are built around Steam. If your game is a popular game with a large transaction volume, the most significant impact of this news is to announce that Steam will exclude chain games. This has caused many Web3 game developers to worry about whether they can still publish games on Steam.
Moderator: So what impact does Steam's decision have on Web3 games?
Eddy Lazzarin: From a player's perspective, my view of Steam is that it allows us to get rid of an important middleman, which is the game store. In the past, games were purchased as consumer goods in the form of actual game discs or game cartridges. Steam replaced this model, allowing game publishers to distribute games directly to everyone's gaming devices. A lot of resource waste is reduced in the middle. Steam now acts as an intermediary between game publishers and players, controlling the game's economy and even the kinds of technology you can use. It forces game developers and publishers to rethink the distribution channels they use, just like other types of media.
Moderator: We have heard about NFT, blockchain games and Web3 games many times in the context of games. What is going on? What is a Web3 game, and how is it different from the traditional games we are used to?
Eddy Lazzarin: We are in the early days of the Web3 game, but it has financial and composable properties, and we will probably see more of its financial properties. In the most basic sense, it’s like using the medium of blockchain or cryptocurrency to pay for games or in-game items. But what's interesting is that Web3 allows players to actually own these in-game items and really dive into them. To a certain extent, even game developers cannot confiscate assets. And this also provides players with the opportunity to trade these items in a way that is legal and very difficult to circumvent or subvert the secondary market. And because of blockchain technology, these game assets or money can completely exit the Steam platform. What I'm worried about is that Steam's one-size-fits-all approach will throw away all the good and bad parts of Web3. Because they limit the compositional capabilities offered by Web3 non-financial applications, blockchain and Web3 allow developers to recombine different elements in games, such as items, lands, skins, and all the different types of entities in these games, that others can Building on it or extending it, the process is a bit like modernization. Web3 offers some very interesting approaches, and really high-quality user improvements to this modeling extend the remixing process. Steam also limits this reintegration by restricting any games built using blockchain technology. This is an extension of modern culture where Web3 will emerge.
Moderator: Putting aside the hype, what practical impact does Steam's decision have on Web3 game developers and their users?
Jonathan Lai: There will definitely be some project owners and NFT holders who will have doubts about the gameplay of chain games, and they will have to move their games and find ways to build communities elsewhere, which I think is always challenging. But it's not an insurmountable challenge, in fact most Web3 games do a great job of building communities, look at most of the mainstream projects now, they have Discord for thousands of people who are talking about the game service, in the sense that they should be able to make money by distributing directly to players.
Moderator: Considering all this, you would think that Steam would want to find a way to coexist, but they seem to see all these foundations, so what is the reason for them to put this restriction in place?
Jonathan Lai: I think there are two potential perspectives that explain Steam's move. There are two viewpoints, one is friendly and the other is mean. Friendly views suggest that this is Steam's attempt to avoid financial reporting and related legal requirements for crypto asset transactions. Another view is that Steam wants to fundamentally maintain control of the market. This includes everything, game content, game types, and pricing. It blasted Steam for taking kickbacks from games published on the platform. The economic activities related to Web3 games and trading NFTs are difficult to control, although Steam is well aware that these are happening on the platform.
Host: What do you think is the most important thing?
Eddy Lazzarin: The bottom line for me is that Web2 companies, including gaming companies, must rethink how Web3 will impact their basic business models, which include taxing distribution, which is the main source of revenue for these types of application platforms source.
Jonathan Lai: Web3 fundamentally disrupts app stores like Steam because this method of game distribution jeopardizes the distribution power in the hands of publishers. Steam blocks and monitors components on their platform, which I think is a defensive move on their part. The point for me is that if you are a blockchain-based game or NFT developer, you unfortunately lose the largest digital distribution platform or PC game distribution platform today. I hope to see a new Web3 native distribution platform, so that buyers who are diverted by platforms such as Steam, Apple, and Google can all use one platform.
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