Australian crypto unicorn Immutable Labs is looking to tackle one of the biggest obstacles to mass adoption of Web3 gaming with its Immutable Passport project. The project is a single sign-on (SSO) system, similar to Google, that will enable gamers to access multiple metaverses, radically reducing user acquisition costs for developers.
The Passport is a self-custodial wallet that allows users to sign in with an email and a one-time password, making onboarding easy and interoperability possible from the early stages of game development. The project has been designed to solve the high cost of entry for some games that require non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to play, as well as to reduce the friction for Web3 gaming newbies.
Immutable is offering discounts of as much as 25% to incentivize the use of Reels, its short-form video product, in a bid to onboard the next billion users to Web3. The firm is also highlighting its AI tools for advertisers, such as Advantage+, a program that uses machine learning to deliver targeted ads across Meta’s social platforms. The move comes as Meta has shifted away from its metaverse ambitions over the past few months.
Immutable is funding a rich pipeline of games with a $500 million fund for game developers, helping to foster the next generation of builders. Its focus is on enabling developers to create scalable and seamless experiences, making a commitment to a several-year development cycle and then a several-year maintenance cycle. The aim is to ensure that all games have access to the tools to give themselves the best possible chance of success.
The company’s recent partnership with Polygon shows its commitment to building “an Ethereum-centric gaming ecosystem that is poised to take Web3 mainstream and bring digital ownership to millions of people around the world,” said Immutable President and co-founder Robbie Ferguson.
Immutable is focused on fostering the next generation of games by not only supporting the ease of onboarding that the Immutable Passport provides to users but also making sure that developers feel supported through their builds, launches, and beyond.
Immutable’s origins date back to the early days of NFTs when founders traded character skins on black markets. They saw the potential of building better Web3 games that allowed items to be traded as NFTs.
One of the first games they built taught them the expensive lesson that gameplay should live off-chain, after realizing that the first game they built fully on the Ethereum blockchain cost about $100 per play. They shifted their focus to fun, scalability, and highlighting the “why” of NFTs with their highly successful game Gods Unchained, a card game similar to Magic the Gathering.
Immutable is aiming Passport not only at users but also at game developers so that projects are working within an interoperable gaming universe from the early stages of development and won’t need to retrofit the Passport into the code. In the end, for mainstream Web3 gaming to really take off, there has to be a game that everyone wants to play, and that breakthrough hit just doesn’t exist yet.
Immutable hopes that it can solve the issues that currently plague new players, where they put some money into one marketplace or cryptocurrency and then don’t understand where those funds or NFTs are in another wallet or game.
Immutable’s mission is to make gaming onboarding less of a turnoff for the next billion users to Web3. By creating a seamless and invisible multi-game product, it is enabling gamers to access multiple metaverses, helping to break down the barriers to mainstream adoption of Web3 gaming.
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