Com2uS USA Chairman: As a traditional gaming giant, how do we enter WEB3?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Com2uS USA Chairman: As a traditional gaming giant, how do we enter WEB3?
How did Com2uS USA, a traditional gaming giant, enter the Web3 world through its own business operations?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Xpla Official
Translation: TechFlow
Editor's Note: This is a speech delivered by Kyu Lee from Com2uS USA on August 9 at Korea Blockchain Week 2022 about C2X and the gaming blockchain XPLA. He讲述了 how Com2uS USA, as a traditional gaming giant, entered the Web3 world through its own business operations.
Below is Kyu Lee’s speech:
The Journey from WEB 2.0 to WEB 3.0 Gaming and Beyond
Today, we will share our journey from WEB 2.0 to WEB 3.0 gaming—it lies right before us.
Com2uS History
Has anyone here played a Com2uS game? Com2uS began making mobile games in 1998 and became one of the first global mobile game companies. Today, Com2uS is a leading global mobile gaming company.
Com2uS Games
We built a successful mobile gaming business. We’ve been developing games for a long time. Over the past 20 years since entering this industry, we’ve created thousands of games. Today I want to share how we evolved and how we entered the Web3 space.
● One of Our Most Successful Titles: Summoners War
Let me introduce Summoners War. The game has generated over $2.7 billion in revenue. After eight years, it still maintains around 1 million daily active players globally. It ranks as the top mobile game in 90 countries and the top RPG in 136 countries worldwide.
About the Com2uS Group and Entertainment Partnerships
Thanks to the success of our core mobile gaming business, we’ve been able to expand further.
To extend our reach onto the global stage, we invested in companies like Skybound, creators of The Walking Dead. We also invested in WYSIWYG STUDIOS—a visual effects studio that now produces many TV shows and films—through distribution partnerships with Netflix.
We’ve also expanded into the KPOP scene.
Recently, we invested in RBW, a music label, and MY MUSIC TASTE—an on-demand online concert platform that predicts optimal locations worldwide for artists to host concerts.
Global Presence
As a global company, we have offices around the world supporting 14 working languages.
Transitioning from WEB2 to WEB3
So how did we transition from WEB 2.0 to WEB 3.0?
The Rise of WEB3
We closely followed Crypto Kitties, Axie Infinity, and NBA Top Shot. When Crypto Kitties emerged, we found blockchain technology very interesting. But back then, it was still too early and had too many hurdles. The market wasn’t mature enough for us to make any decisions yet.
● Top Shot and Axie Infinity
However, when Axie Infinity and Top Shot truly broke through last year, that’s when we seriously reconsidered WEB3 again. When Top Shot announced its shift to P2E (Play-to-Earn), MLB immediately came to mind.
MLB has digital collectibles owned by users. We've had an 8-year business relationship with MLB, providing services for five different games. What would happen to our MLB business once a crypto layer is added?
It wouldn't just be digital collectibles anymore—they could also be playable within games, fundamentally transforming the business model. That was my initial thought about our WEB3 transformation.
When Axie Infinity appeared, we saw billions of dollars pouring in rapidly. Although Axie looked like a simple RPG game, with so much capital flowing in, they hired the right talent and invested heavily in production, clearly increasing the game’s value. At that point, we gathered around the table and asked ourselves the same question: "What would happen to some of our businesses?"
Mobile Games > App Store > F2P Games > Blockchain
I really want to thank our executive team because they were always ahead during market transitions. It's extremely difficult for a company to survive more than 20 years.
We started our venture in college, jumping into mobile gaming because we knew it would be the next big revolution. Then what happened? The iPhone! The iPhone became the new future! All these barriers were broken by one person.
All those obstacles were shattered by app stores. So we had to put everything on app stores. Then came F2P (Free-to-Play) games, enabling monetization within mobile games. Our company transitioned from being product-based to service-based.
Over these 20 years, we’ve undergone numerous transitions. When we finally saw blockchain, adopting it felt almost natural. WEB3 gaming poses a key question to the market: "Would you play a game that gives you digital ownership?"
We interpreted this as "Are players willing to play games for free or pay to play?"
C2X WEB 3.0 Gaming Platform
So we created C2X, a WEB3.0 gaming platform!
WEB2.0 vs WEB3.0 Users
Looking at the market, we found millions of WEB 2.0 users versus only thousands of WEB 3.0 users. To enter WEB 3.0, users must create a centralized exchange account, set up a wallet, buy NFTs, etc.—the entry barriers are far too high!!
There must be a solution. We fundamentally believed this approach contradicted our philosophy in free-to-play (F2P) gaming.
We spent years optimizing F2P, yet everything in WEB 3.0 goes against it. We wanted to write our own version of WEB 3.0.
Our approach is indeed different from most games in the market.
We examined games using a single token in WEB3.0 and believe this model isn't sustainable. There needs to be sufficient buying pressure to sustain the token. We noticed many companies issue tokens tied solely to a single game.
Therefore, we designed a dual-token system: C2X as the primary governance token, and each game having its own deflationary utility token.
C2X SDK
During our transition, we had 20 internal development teams. We needed to build common tools usable by every team to establish robust WEB 3.0 services and products.
Fortunately, we already had HIVE SDK—an all-in-one solution for push notifications, login, and more. Using HIVE SDK, we quickly developed C2X SDK to support our DeFi wallet, marketplace, and blockchain functionalities.
Now, developers don’t need to write any code—simply integrate the C2X SDK to build WEB 3.0-ready products and services.
Progress in Building the WEB 3.0 Gaming Ecosystem
Since April this year, we’ve launched five games on the C2X platform and plan to release ten games by year-end.
We sold Beta Game Launcher fan cards. Fan cards for three games were completely sold out: Summoners War: Lost Centuria, Chromatic Souls: AFK Raid, and Idle Luca.
Concerns Due to Mainnet Issues
As known, we faced some difficulties. Our mainnet encountered issues, forcing us to find a new home for our blockchain.
When selecting a new blockchain, these three factors were paramount. We needed to migrate all assets quickly, as people were already playing our games. We'd already built many tools around it, so compatibility with existing services was essential. And of course, the new blockchain must have a genuine long-term vision.
A Content-Centric Blockchain Built by Creators
Our vision is to create a content-centric blockchain. We want the blockchain to be invisible, just like the internet.
We aim to meet the exact needs of WEB 2.0 developers and help them transition to WEB 3.0. We’ll share all our experiences—we speak the same language—and I believe we can achieve great things together.
We’re already building games, metaverse, and NFT platforms. By next year, we’ll launch over 20 games on the C2X gaming platform, with even more on future platforms.
We have a metaverse called Com2Verse, partnering with over a dozen Korean companies. Our NFT marketplace hosts assets from all our portfolio companies. We also plan to launch more DeFi services and platforms. However, this DeFi ecosystem won’t be built alone—we need more partners to co-create.
Introducing XPLA: Our New Blockchain for Gaming
XPLA is the name of our new blockchain.
Migrating C2X to XPLA
First, we will provide opportunities to migrate all your assets to XPLA—we’ll announce details soon.
Technical Features of the XPLA Mainnet
Built on the Cosmos SDK with Tendermint consensus, XPLA will easily connect to multiple chains via IBC. Recognizing demand, many developers still prefer writing smart contracts in Solidity and leveraging Ethereum’s liquidity. Therefore, we’ll add EVM support—enabling you to list assets on OpenSea and use MetaMask.
XPLA Mainnet Middleware
We’ll build essential services like wallets and search explorers. One of the biggest future challenges will be discovery—there will be countless WEB3.0 games, but no equivalent to the App Store to find them. You’ll discover all XPLA games through our explorer and manage all assets via our wallet.
Connecting WEB 2.0 and WEB 3.0 Services
Of course, we’ll continue supporting the transition of WEB2.0 users and developers into the WEB3.0 space. We’ll offer design support, technical assistance, and leverage our own experience. Just as we mastered F2P, this space requires massive iteration.
When we developed free games, we learned a lot from competitors. I believe there will be intense competition and rich learning in this field—we want to learn and share everything we know.
We truly believe in a multi-chain future—I don't think only one or two L1s will survive. To position ourselves, we must accept we can't do everything. Targeting specific niches is increasingly important, and ours is gaming and entertainment. This is what we know best and where we can deliver the best tools.
XPLA Roadmap
We’ve been preparing rapidly—we’ll launch our testnet tomorrow and roll out the mainnet around the end of the month.
EVM support is already in testing. If you have an EVM-based game you’d like to test on our network, feel free to contact us. We plan to fully launch EVM support by year-end. The C2X SDK mentioned earlier will upgrade to 2.0, accessible to everyone via the Beta Game Launcher.
Technology Partners
On the technical side, we already have eight validators and many experienced partners who will assist us technically and are committed to building our mainnet together.
Next Steps for XPLA
We're all beginners. We want to bring more elements into our ecosystem and truly hope to build this great new platform together with many partners.
Thank you very much.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
