Nexon, the giant Asian-based game publisher, plans to create a brand new product that would be based on the foundations of the popular role-playing game MapleStory Universe. In doing so, it will take advantage of Web3 technology. Along with the release of the new game, Nexon also announced the launch of a private Supernet on Polygon. The news was premiered on Tuesday, during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Nexon joins forces with Polygon, giving space to NFT development
Since its launch, which took place in 2003, MapleStory has become a real hit for Nexon. The game has generated more than $4 billion in revenue, with more than 180 million registered users worldwide. On the Steam platform, the number is even higher, exceeding 260 million.
In anticipation of the ecosystem’s expansion and development on Polygon, MapleStory Universe group leader Hwang Sun-young issued a statement saying that “we are looking forward to developing the NFT ecosystem on MapleStory Universe using Polygon technology.” He added that “we will work closely with Polygon Labs to develop and market the game.”
NFT for gamers
The Polygon network is a scalable network on the Ethereum platform that provides faster and cheaper transactions than the original Ethereum mainnet. The planned Polygon Supernet will be a dedicated “application chain” for Nexon, which will allow it to scale in ways not possible on a shared blockchain. According to Urvit Goel, Polygon Labs’ vice president of Global Gaming and Platform Development, Nexon has a broad vision of how many transactions per day will be completed. They are primarily influenced by the scale of the game’s adoption.
MapleStory Universe was announced last year, but there is no confirmed release date yet. Urvit Goel of Polygon Labs confirmed that there will be no NFT pre-orders, and that players will be able to acquire NFT items by playing the game, rather than through microtransactions. “They are not pushing in-app purchases,” he said. – he added, referring to practices found in other mobile games, for iOS and Android platforms.
Connecting games to the blockchain is becoming the standard
Nexon is a company that finds its ancestry in South Korea and Japan, and derives most of its revenue from the Korean market. This one, in turn, is proving very favorable to blockchain technology. Indeed, it turns out that Nexon is not the only one that has decided to take advantage of Web3 technology. As Urvit Goel of Polygon Labs noted:
“Korea was undoubtedly the leader among developers. And if you look at the top ten gaming companies in the country, as many as eight of them have publicly announced that they are working on something related to blockchain, which is very unique on a global scale.”
