Deep Dive: Let's Talk About the Blockchain Thing

TL;DR:

• Golden Tides is not a web3 game. There is no airdrop, no token, no points system.
• A small number of early supporter skins exist onchain. They still work in-game and won't be diluted. We're not releasing more.
• We made this decision because our players asked for it. We will always put them first.
• Some of our team members and players have received death threats over this. We condemn this, and it won't change anything.

Hey everyone,

We wanted to dive a little deeper into why, despite our early plans, we decided to move away from integrating a marketplace powered by web3 for Golden Tides.
But first we must address something:

After our public announcement of moving away from these plans, some of our supporters and team members started receiving death threats. We condemn this in the strongest terms. Regardless of ANY circumstances, death threats are NEVER okay. It won't change anything. We made this decision because it was right for our players and the game, and no amount of pressure is going to change that.

We told you we'd put players first, even when it hurts. This is what that looks like.

Our Early Plans:

Golden Tides has always been about making a great game, empowering players and listening to our community. That always came before anything else, and those values guide EVERY decision we make, even if it hurts us as a business.

We envisioned a future where blockchain technology could help us do this. We had plans for a marketplace, similar to the steam market, where players could sell their cosmetic skins.

How many times have you bought skins for a game, then quit or changed mains and wished you could get your money back? More than once here! What about giving your old skins to a friend? Sounds great! That’s what we wanted to enable. We think the industry hasn’t, and won’t adopt something like this (outside of special cases) as it eats from other skin sales.
We never really cared for that. We wanted to be radically for the players, even when it hurts our bottom line.

You can read our manifesto where we dive deeper into this here: https://goldentides.notion.site/ (Even though it’s FULLY OBSOLETE now, and we don’t have any plans to include such features, we decided to keep it public for archival reasons.)

In 2024, we sold some of these tradeable skins for between $15 and $50. The price varies, as cryptocurrencies are highly volatile. The majority of the skins were sold for between $15-$25.
These skins also promised an “airdrop” - which stands for a free gift later on if you don’t sell the skin. We did several airdrops in 2024, gifting the owners of these skins various in-game cosmetics. After 2024, we have not released or sold any onchain cosmetics. Our focus has been entirely on building a great game.
These skins continue working in-game as cosmetics, are still collectible and can be traded.

As a sidenote for transparency, I'll note that even earlier on in development, we explored various different visions for the game, as we were still figuring out what Golden Tides is. Some of the crazier ones included burying blockchain related rewards in the game for the players to fight over. These plans never made it into the game (due to various concerns with the concept), and we quickly moved past them.

Why we decided to move away from our plans:

We still believe that in a perfect world, these technologies can be used for the good of the people. To actually empower players. However, we don’t live in a perfect world.
As years passed, the skepticism around these technologies has grown. And honestly, for a good reason. A lot of bad actors used these technologies to do the opposite of what we wanted. Instead of empowering the players, they exploited them.

As we talked to more and more gamers, a common feedback we received was: “I LOVE the game. I hate that it’s web3 and I think my friends wouldn’t check it out because of that.” To return to the beginning, our studio was founded with core values around respecting players. And a big part of that is listening to what they have to say.
Our players, the gamers actually playing the game (many of them who had also purchased these skins early on!) were telling us to not go forward with our plans for the marketplace.
We chose to listen. Doing anything else would’ve been to betray the values we want to build our studio around.  

We sincerely respect the early supporters who saw our vision before anyone else did, and protecting our players and the game comes before anything else. 
This is us doing exactly that.

We recently finished a fundraise with some of the biggest players in the industry. We’ve spent the last year quietly making the game better than it has ever been, and we’re about to come out with a big playtest.

We believe we're sailing in the right direction. And if this whole situation has shown anything, it's that we meant it when we said we'd put players first. No matter what.

Yo ho ho,

Miko ‘Anomie’ Rytkonen