Axie Infinity, the P2E (play-to-earn) heavyweight game run by Sky Mavis, is looking to focus on exploring the Korean market to provoke adoption despite the huge regulatory hurdles in the territory.
Speaking at the Korean Blockchain Week – KBW 2022, the co-founder and growth lead of Sky Mavis, Jeffrey Zirlin, mentioned that Korea has one of the most important markets for the gaming industry in the world despite the domestic ban placed on P2E games in the country, and the game has a huge number of players in South Korea.
The co-founder added that the current task of the firm is to figure out ways to model the Axie Infinity game to the community of Korean gamers. He said: Koreans represent most of the top players on our leaderboard, and it can be used to establish that Korea has some of the best gamers in the world.
Regulatory Hurdles for Axie Infinity in South Korea
The Game Rating and Administration Committee of South Korea prohibit the launching of domestic blockchain-based play-to-earn (P2E) games mainly because of the strict anti-gaming rules and policies. In December 2021, the South Korean government moved to restrict the Apple Store and Google Play from listing such games in the country.
Speaking about the regulations and policies, Zirlin noted that it is still in its early days, and it is going to take a thorough process of education and negotiation. He added that he is hoping the massive adoption of the P2E games will be enough to move the government to take a turn from the regulation in the future.
The Plan to Expand
Currently, the Axie Infinity project is in its early access stage, and it has not been rolled out as an application in the Apple Store or Google Play. According to data on Active Player, about 766,000 gamers logged in to the game last month which is a massive drop from the all-time high recorded in January – 2.7 million.
Axie Infinity is currently focused on increasing the adoption of the game first in Korea and across the world basically by improving on the overall gaming experience and also seeing to the expansion of its ecosystem through new battle modes like Origin, which is leading with over 600,000 sign ups in June.
He added that Origin came with three starter Axies – a name for the NFT characters used in the game so that gamers can interact with the game freely without making any financial or economic decisions.
