Rough House Games, the developer of third-person arena RPG Champions Ascension, alongside the team developing multiplayer RPG Overworld, have both teamed up to join Reach Labs, a new gaming publisher unveiled this December with the goal of creating an ecosystem of web3 and web2 games that rewards developers, creators, and gamers. Say hello to the Reach platform.

What Is the Reach Platform?

Reach is a new publishing platform that is building a decentralized distribution solution that aims to enable gaming studios to easily engage with their communities while allowing players and content creators to earn money for promoting the games they love. This means that in this ecosystem, when gamers contribute to a game’s growth by inviting their friends over to play, they’re rewarded with a share of the revenue generated from in-game spending and activity.

The platform’s goal is to solve the issue of software growth, which highly relies on the community’s support. In today’s fast-paced world, the few big platforms available fail to properly reward communities and creators who significantly contribute to the continuous growth of various networks and games. If gamers and creators didn’t talk about their favorite games to others, those titles wouldn’t be as successful as they are today. Yet despite the efforts and support provided from dedicated communities, those players get little, if anything back in return.

That’s where Reach steps in. They’ve set up a framework that enables game developers both in and outside blockchain gaming to engage with fans and experience “explosive and organic growth” while leveraging web3 features that make it possible for everyone to be rewarded accordingly for directly participating in a game’s growth.

How Can Gamers and Creators Earn on Reach?

Whether you’re a gamer, streamer, or guild owner, anyone can earn their share by inviting their friends, followers, and community over to games part of this platform.

By doing so, you’re creating your own network that can continuously grow as your members invite more people to be a part of your growing community. The bigger your community is and the more active it is, the more you’ll get to earn from the games they play.

Basically, whenever anyone from your community plays any game in this ecosystem, you will be rewarded for their in-game activity. Whenever they make an in-game purchase, you earn your share. If the game has ads, then you get to earn a piece of ad revenue just for having your referral simply play the game. If your community members complete in-game events that have rewards up for grabs, you too will be rewarded for that as well. Essentially, the more active your community is, the more you earn. After all, they’re only playing thanks to you bringing them over, and so their actions come as a result of your direct contribution. Your efforts and their in-game activity contribute to the game’s growth. If you had never marketed the game to them, they maybe would have never played it!

Why Are Overworld and Champions Ascension Joining Reach?

Champions Ascension is joining Reach to become the platform’s flagship game, which comes as no surprise, given that the game’s developer, Rough House Games, has decided to transform into this democratized distribution platform under the Reach Labs publishing label, expanding the studio’s work beyond their gaming IP to deliver a solution that benefits the entire gaming industry. This also means that the Keystone Protocol, integrated into Champions Ascension earlier this year, is now this platform’s core infrastructure, providing an on-chain distribution solution through which anyone can be properly rewarded for expanding their active communities.

With Champions Ascension becoming part of the platform’s first-party lineup, what happens to holders of Prime Eternal NFTs? Well, according to the official announcement, holders who pre-claimed $KEYS and continue to hold their NFTs in the same wallet will still be able to claim their token airdrop after TGE. The $KEYS token will serve as the foundation of this new ecosystem, and as such is set to be integrated across all games and apps to help drive organic growth while powering governance and rewards.

Through this platform, Rough House Games is merging with Overworld, who have also decided to take this “massive leap forward” as they too want to “accelerate the future of distribution and gaming”. Thanks to this merger, this web3 title will also be among the first-party games that will kick off the launch of this platform. Their official tweet reveals that $MNCT allocations for NFT holders will be distributed as $KEYS, and anyone who won $MNCT from Overworld Arena will also get their rewards as $KEYS now instead. Incarna and Supporter Key NFT holders will get their $XTER token allocations as normally planned. Holder bonuses will apply to $KEYS rewards distribution.

Next to these two blockchain games that will be the first to integrate this new protocol and show how it works, the ecosystem’s first-party lineup will also include “spotlight titles from Overworld,” including Overworld “Conquest”, and Braves, a new 4X mobile strategy game that was previously known as Overworld Kingdoms

Over time, the web3 publisher will "aggressively” expand its lineup by acquiring various gaming studios and forming numerous strategic partnerships. Considering Overworld is a part of Xterio, the new platform is making use of this existing relationship to make strategic partnerships across the Binance-backed ecosystem. You can probably expect to see MMO strategy game Age of Dino integrate the Reach Protocol, among other web3 gaming projects.