ClanPlay Announces $2 Million Raised for Blockchain-Based Gamer Rewards Platform
ClanPlay is an Israel-based startup gaming community platform with multiple features for developers and gamers alike. The company operates as a social hub for gamers that like to play with clans while also providing players with rewards for their skills. With only five employees, the company has raised $4 million to date.
On September 27, 2018, ClanPlay announced it was able to raise more than $2 million in venture funding from Bicameral Ventures to support the development of the world’s first marketplace for in-game action.
Building on Aion: Gamers and Developers Rejoice
Bicameral Ventures is a seed venture that supports projects building on the Aion platform and will help ClanPlay leverage its two million users database by implementing blockchain technology. The Good Game Marketplace (GGM) is set to be launched in Q4 2018.
Good Game Marketplace is a mobile app that already captivated the interest of millions of users and will soon be accessible to all gamers on PC and console. GGM will enable trading in-game services and large-scale tournaments where players can earn money for their skills. GGM will use a utility token called Good Game (“GG”) to facilitate these operations. Leonard Frankel, the founder and CEO of ClanPlay, stated:
“The low cost of transactions, speed of the network, and the ability to seamlessly integrate several blockchains into our platform were all differentiating factors in choosing Aion to develop our platform on and collaborate with. Aion’s blockchain platform has given our ecosystem the ability to let gamers profit from their favorite games, without requiring offline bank accounts.”
The business model ClanPlay allows developers to pay users to take action inside games instead of spending their money on expensive ads on Google or Facebook. According to VentureBeat, the project is another step toward the Leisure Economy, where anyone is paid to play games.
The Israeli startup believes that this can create a parallel economy where gamers are paid to play, while developers receive input from their interactions which will help them to solve potential problems and develop new products and features within the ecosystem.
GG tokens can be used by developers to pay in proportion to how committed users are with their games. Players will need to go through campaigns that can be structured to incentivize progression milestones such as “watching the game’s ad, downloading it, reaching level five, and even making the first purchase.”
Additionally, developers can use social promotion by paying influencers (e.g., YouTubers and streamers) with a share of revenues generated by players that clicked the links they shared. GGM will also transform how gaming team leaders and eSports managers encourage players to complete in-game tasks such as joining a team or reaching in-game goals. Asaf Semo, ClanPlay’s CTO, commented:
“We designed a scalable platform to support millions of active users and in-line with our lean approach that prioritizes time to market, Aion posed an unparalleled opportunity. The Aion platform solves many of our requirements around currency management, security and ease of transactions.”
The CEO believes that gamers that have skills should be rewarded and encouraged to play new games. Apart from this, players can also be a better advertisement vehicle than Facebook and other social media platforms.
According to Frankel “direct revenue sharing would align interests of both parties and create a fair-trade practice that the company expects to be attractive for tens of thousands of game influencers, whose content is currently under-monetized.” The company’s initial plans were to raise money via an initial coin offering (ICO), but due to regulatory restrictions, ClanPlay abandoned this funding option and turned to a traditional venture round.
