In December 2022, thirdweb partnered with Coinbase to launch Gamingkit, a full-stack solution for developers looking to build web3 games on any EVM chain without all the complexity of building on a blockchain.

Since then, they have continued to add impressive features to accelerate developers building games with on-chain components, including wallets, smart contracts, and scalable infrastructure. 

The full stack web3 development platform has now reported that they support over 1600 active web3 games built on Unity. This is a 450% increase in activity since the end of 2023.  

Some of the most renowned studios and games building with their tools include Pixels, Infinigods, Ex Populus, Nifty Island, Pixelmon, and many more. 

Atif Khan, VP of Business at thirdweb said: “Our investment into gaming has started to pay off in spades. We believe thirdweb is on track to become the foundation for web3 gaming, and we couldn’t be more proud to support thousands of studios and games today.”

Future of Gaming

In the last decade, gaming has seen explosive growth. In 2021 alone, gamers spent over $54 billion on in-game purchases. However, there are many issues with the closed ecosystems that come with these games. Players invest their time and money into these games but they have zero ownership over their items and are unable to capture any value back from their efforts.

Web3 gaming stands to change that, giving power back to the players and enabling the same property rights over digital assets that people have over physical ones. When games incorporate blockchain-based digital assets (in the form of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs), players have full ownership over those assets:

• The asset can be sold on an open marketplace to other players for in-game tokens, cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, and even fiat money like USD.
• The asset can be used or displayed in partner games or franchises.
• The asset can unlock perks and rewards outside the game that they live in, and across the web3 ecosystem.

This creates a fair, open in-game economy where players share in the financial upside of the success of the game.

Blockchain games are also interoperable. Traditional online games exist on centralized servers, meaning that in-game assets are locked into systems that don’t communicate with each other. On the other hand, web3 games exist on blockchains, which act as the same backend framework across all games built on them.

As a result, game assets represented by NFTs can be designed to be interoperable across different environments across the same blockchain. Gaming universes can expand to be far greater and creatively ambitious than traditional games because of the interoperability of video game assets.

Introducing GamingKit

Like many of us, the thirdweb team believes web3 is the future of gaming. But for web3 to reach mass adoption, game developers and studios need the tools to build world-class web3 game experiences that rival or improve on those of traditional games.

That’s why thirdweb built GamingKit, to take care of the blockchain infrastructure and enable game studios to focus on building the best game possible. GamingKit simplifies the web3 development workflow and is designed to work with the most popular existing game engine SDKs.

Here’s what GamingKit unlocks for developers today:

Simplify web3 complexity for game devs

• Game Engine SDKs to integrate web3 into games (launching with their Unity SDK).
• Pre-built & customizable smart contracts to start building quickly.
• Dashboard to manage contracts.

Monetize with web3 technologies

• Fiat to crypto on-ramp with Coinbase Pay.
• Marketplace with a configurable platform fee.
• Enforceable fees for NFT primary and secondary sales (royalties).
• Splits for revenue sharing.

Improved web3 user experience for game players

• Easy integration with web3 wallets, (Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, Phantom).
• Paying transaction gas fees for users to play, without needing any crypto.
• Fiat-to-crypto on-ramp.

Final Thoughts

The use cases for web3 are unlimited and so as thirdweb continues to build out their development kit, they are being very intentional about prioritizing the categories that have significant demand and massive potential. Gaming was at the top of that list.

The thirdweb team has already powered blockchain gaming launches from some of the biggest names in the space, including Fractal, Animoca Brands, and Gala Games, to independent developers & teams. They are continuing to launch their tools & democratize access for studios and developers to leverage the benefits of building on web3.

If you’d like to learn about how GamingKit can accelerate your web3 gaming build, reach out to the team on their website.