Yield Guild Games got its start staking players to earn their own money in Axie Infinity, but now it has expanded its guild of players into something bigger. The company released its annual report on its doings today.
The guild started in November 2020 as a guild that gave “scholarships” to players so they could mint their own NFT characters in Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity game. That helped players deal with the startup costs for the “play-to-earn” game where players could level up their characters and resell them for a profit.
The game saw a boom in NFT trading in the summer of 2021 and then declined precipitously in the fall and winter. Axie Infinity saw its daily active users (DAU) surge 12,400% from 20,000 in March to more than 2.5 million in December 2021. But that number is likely under pressure now that the value of Axie’s tokens has declined.
Meanwhile, Yield Guild Games started diversifying across other games. By the end of 2021, YGG had partnered with 48 projects in games, gaming guilds, and essential play-to-earn infrastructure. YGG has more than 100,000 Discord members.
One of the things YGG does to help its guild members — beyond giving scholarships — is investing in other blockchain games. In total, YGG has spent $9.7 million in partnering with projects by purchasing in-game NFT assets and tokens, both in-game tokens and governance tokens, that will enable YGG players to have access to more play-to-earn services.
Of those partnerships, by cost, 76.2% were in play-to-earn games, 17.4% in gaming guilds, and 6.4% in other play-to-earn infrastructure projects to support the YGG community experience in these games.
Q4 2021 was the most active quarter of 2021 with 27 new partnerships being solidified, totaling $5.46 million. Of that, 54.73% went directly to play-to-earn games, 27.44% was for gaming guilds to expand the reach of YGG and 17.83% was targeted at platforms and infrastructure that would support the wider play-to-earn ecosystem.
In December 2021, YGG crossed the 10,000 mark in its total number of scholars. YGG achieved 63% growth in scholars onboarded during December alone. In the report, YGG founders Beryl Li, Gabby Dizon, and Owl of Moistness said that those scholars have earned more than $11.3 million from putting their time into play-to-earn games.
The accelerated scholar onboarding has continued since year’s end, and today, the number of YGG scholars is now over 17,000. YGG’s team has grown to 29 people.
The guild has created episodes to educate players to play Axie Infinity. Out of Axie Bootcamp’s 34 episodes to date, 25 were released in Q4, with an average of 80 viewers per episode. The series had more than 1,000 live participants and reached over 50,000 views in Q4.