Leading Web3 gaming platform Immutable is addressing a major barrier in the adoption of decentralised gaming. In its latest press release, it has teased the elimination of gas fees for its players.
The move will be facilitated via its proprietary scaling platform, zkEVM, which is being developed in collaboration with Polygon Labs, set to go live in 2024.
The technology, which leverages zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs), would ensure a “frictionless onboarding and enhanced user experience” for gamers.
In Web3 games, especially the ones built on Ethereum, users are typically required to pay the gas fees allocated to network validators for processing transactions.
Immutable stated: “As it stands today, gas fees — or commissions that users must pay to process their transactions — are among the biggest roadblocks for the mass adoption of decentralised gaming. Despite being an essential and integral part of any Web3 ecosystem used to incentivise miners or node operators to keep blockchains secure, democratic, and decentralised, transaction fees can also be detrimental and strenuous for players, especially those coming from traditional gaming communities.”
With its latest decision, Immutable seeks to offer a solution to make these fees invisible and non-existent for players, thereby removing a key point of friction. This would offer a more familiar and streamlined user experience to gamers, similar to traditional gaming environments.
Benefits to game developers
Following its release, Immutable zkEVM would allow game developers to sponsor gas fees for users, cancelling out these transactions for Immutable Passport users.
This would ensure easier onboarding and higher transaction conversion rates, along with increased player adoption and revenue for game studios. There is also the plan to sponsor gas fees for all of its ecosystem games for a limited time frame during its mainnet launch.
For game studios, the cost of sponsoring gas fees is expected to be minimal. It is estimated at approximately $500-$1,000 for every 100,000 users in their respective gaming environments.
This could potentially increase player adoption and revenues for game studios, which eventually would act as an expense akin to infrastructure or server costs, said Immutable’s chief technology officer, Alex Connolly.
The move would, therefore, pave the way for new monetisation models in the gaming industry, benefiting both players and game studios.
In an announcement made in August, Immutable said that its zkEVM will give game developers access to lower development costs, as well as the security and network effects that come with the Ethereum ecosystem.
Previously, Immutable’s co-founder and president, Robbie Ferguson, had also expressed that its zkEVM is designed to amplify ownership rights for Web3 gamers.
A leading contender in Web3 gaming
VanEck, one of the world’s top 10 ETF issuers with over $65 billion in assets under management, recently recognised Immutable as a leading contender in the Web3 gaming space.
As laid out in its latest predictions for 2024, VanEck believes the platform to likely attract more traditional gamers due to its approach to user experience and technical innovations via things like Immutable Passport.
Co-founded by James Ferguson, Robbie Ferguson, and Alex Connolly in 2018, Immutable is a global leader in gaming on a mission to bring digital ownership to every player. It is backed by top tech investors and offers a suite of solutions for game development on Ethereum.
