Highly Anticipated ‘ICE Merge’ by Decentral Games is Complete

In an effort to reduce ICE token emissions by 55%, Decentral Games, the play & own Metaverse studio behind ICE Poker, Decentraland’s most popular gaming arena, has launched a strategy.

Delegated players may accomplish the reduction by renting the necessary wearable NFTs, which previously resulted in a higher return. Instead of receiving ICE as a direct reward, players will instead earn “banked ICE,” which may be spent on wearables and shine for use in ICE Poker Sit-n-Go tournaments.

If a player already owns their wearable, they won’t be affected by the move, and Banked ICE provides a straightforward route to NFT ownership. This is part of a larger trend away from the “Play to Earn” strategy and toward the “Play & Own” approach, which offers a route to asset ownership to players.

The objective is to attract dedicated, long-term players who can perfect their skills in ICE Poker, which will need a change in the demographics of the player population.

Even if 90% of all players are delegated, they tend to promptly sell their ICE, thereby removing value from the ecosystem. If the ICE system were changed to Banked ICE, the delegation would become a means to eventual ownership rather than a means to immediate financial gain. Tokens held in Banked ICE may still be redeemed for ICE, but at a 70% penalty and require a balance of 6,666 Banked ICE or more.

A favorable influence on ICE dynamics is expected since only effective token sinks will be left to provide value for holders. The wearables and shine mechanism allows the ICE Poker ecosystem to maintain a sustainable equilibrium where player burns are constantly greater than new emissions.

Matthew Howells-Barby, CMO at Decentral Games said:

“The existing play-to-earn model is broken. While offering limitless rewards to those that have invested nothing can be incredible for bootstrapping player liquidity, they are unsustainable. We’ve seen this with nearly every major GameFi project that kept this model. We’re taking a different approach. Our focus is on the long term and it centers on enabling our players to own in-game assets through their gameplay while managing the token emissions we create so that the player base can scale without issue. This is what’s going to set us apart over the next 12-18 months.”