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Traditional Gaming Revenue Model
Paid game: One-time purchase. Publisher retains all revenue from resales. Players cannot sell their accounts or in-game items on official markets (and unofficial markets are banned/exploited).
Free-to-play (F2P): Revenue from cosmetic microtransactions, battle passes, and loot boxes. The average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) for top F2P games: $50–$200/month for "whales." Items purchased are non-transferable licenses — lost if account banned.
The publish-extract model: Publisher creates, extracts all value. Players are the value creators (content, community, engagement) and the value payers (purchases), but share in none of the financial upside.
GameFi Economic Model
Player ownership: In-game assets are NFTs the player owns. Publisher cannot delete them (absent contract-level burn function they control). Tradeable on secondary markets. Persistent across games if other games recognize the asset standard.
Play-to-earn: Players earn tokens by playing. Real-value earnings — but entirely dependent on tokenomics sustainability. If token price falls, earning value falls. If players exit, token demand falls, price falls, earning value falls faster.
Revenue model alternatives: Tournament entry fees (burn mechanism), marketplace transaction fees, premium NFT sales, cosmetic passes (familiar F2P model applied to NFT assets).
What Determines GameFi Success
A blockchain game must be fun enough to play for free — the token earnings are a bonus, not the reason to play. The games that survive bear markets (Axie Infinity did not; several others have) are fun games that happen to have blockchain economies, not economic schemes that happen to have games.