Game public chains Ronin and ROMW tear each other apart, and users "pay the bill" for the breakup

Author: Zen, PANews

Recently, 0x&, the developer team of Ragnarok: Monster World (ROMW), took the lead in launching the "multi-chain architecture" server on CROSS Protocol, announcing that the game process and token system will be completely independent of Ronin. The community immediately exploded for this move, criticizing its "soft rug" style move and worrying about the rights and interests of players and the ecological prospects.

Only two days after the announcement, SkyMavis co-founder and COO Aleksander Larsen publicly accused ROMW of "ignoring advice, secretly signing with other chains, and seriously violating the cooperation agreement" on X on April 26, and announced the termination of the professional cooperation relationship with 0x&. This series of events pushed the original deep cooperation into a crisis of trust. While the Ronin ecosystem was slightly damaged, the future of ROMW became more worrying.

Rashomon: Ronin and ROMW each have their own opinions

"The game team ignored our advice and lost the support of the community. Worse, they secretly signed an agreement with another blockchain, violating our agreement. Considering our long-term support for them, this is naturally surprising. Trust has been broken to such an extent that we have decided to end our professional cooperation with 0x&, the development team of "Ragnarok: Monster World."

Recently, Aleksander Larsen, co-founder and COO of Ronin's parent company Sky Mavis, issued a statement condemning the ROMW development team for "betraying" Ronin and announced a break with it. The honeymoon period between the two parties, which lasted only one year, came to an end.

"Ragnarok Online" (Chinese translation: Ragnarok Online) is an MMORPG launched by Korean developer Gravity in 2002. This classic online game has attracted more than 100 million players worldwide and generated more than $2 billion in revenue. Following the classic IP of Ragnarok Online, 0x& launched the tower defense game "Ragnarok: Monster World" after obtaining authorization from Gravity, and announced in April 2024 that it would debut on the Ronin blockchain. According to the official press release at the time, 0x& not only established a partnership with Ronin, but also received investment from Sky Mavis.

In response to the accusations of Ronin's co-creation, ROMW denied that any secret agreement had been reached, and had fulfilled all contractual obligations. As early as February 2024, it had transparent communication with Sky Mavis, including a direct meeting with Aleksander Larsen. ROMW also stated that no matter what challenges it faces in the future, it will continue to operate games on Ronin, and further stated: "We believe that decisions made without regard to the interests of the community will ultimately undermine the uniqueness of Ronin."

Both sides stick to their own opinions, and the community cannot tell which is true and which is false. However, in this Rashomon incident, the behavior and attitude of both Ronin and ROMW have disappointed the players and the community.

From love to hate: Xiao Tiantian becomes Niu Madam

In fact, one day before Aleksander Larsen officially announced the breakup with ROMW, some community players had already discovered that there was an obvious rift between the two sides. In a post about the fishing game "Fishing Frenzy" that Ronin ecosystem has recently promoted, Ronin co-founder Jihoz criticized ROMW without reservation, saying that the game is just a "poor copycat version of "Clash Royale"". Jihoz said that ROMW was going to make money on other platforms, and directly criticized it, saying that it is now only focused on "Ragnarok Landverse: Genesis".

"Ragnarok Landverse: Genesis" is also based on the Ragnarok Online IP, and the game design is closer to the classic original. It can basically be regarded as the Web3 version of "Ragnarok Online". Genesis was developed by meta-game ecosystem developer Zentry (formerly GuildFi) and launched on Ronin at the end of March this year. Prior to this, Zentry-controlled flagship game studio Maxion initially soft-launched "Ragnarok Landverse" on BNB Chain in September 2023 after obtaining IP licensing cooperation, and the Genesis series released on Ronin can also be regarded as the latest adaptation and continuation of this version.

Jihoz's fierce criticism made some community users think that his words were a bit too harsh, and many players found it difficult to understand this inconsistency. After all, they were the ones who praised ROMW in the early days, and they are also the ones who are stepping on it now. In addition, Larsen, who posted a statement to express his split, also mentioned in his statement that because ROMW violated the trust regulations, they would take "punishment" - removing the game and its assets from Sky Mavis products, including removing ROMW's related NFTs from the Ronin market.

This decision also caused it to be questioned by the community. Some users called it over-centralized and a "typical manifestation of authoritarianism", and an open blockchain should not do this. There are also Ronin supporters who are not ROMW players who advise: "You should not remove their NFTs from your market. This is not the fault of the end users. This mainly damages the trading ability of Ronin users." I hope not to continue to damage the credibility of the Ronin ecosystem.

Later, Larsen issued a statement saying that they had listened to the community's feedback and would not completely remove Ragmon's assets from the Ronin market, but would remove the check mark to indicate that the official did not recognize or support the game. However, it is now much more difficult to search for ROMW-related NFT collections on the Ronin market. And after ROMW officially announced that it would "find a new home" and after a confrontation between the two sides, the prices of related NFTs have fallen sharply across the board. In this inconsistency, the only ones who are most hurt are the gamers who once believed in Ronin's official endorsement and ROMW's quality.

Do ROMW and its new love CROSS have a future?

ROMW's "new love" CROSS Protocol is a dedicated sidechain based on Ethereum that supports on-chain games and NFT ownership verification. It was developed by multi-platform game provider NEXUS, and governance is handed over to the Swiss-registered non-profit organization Opengame Foundation. In March this year, CROSS Protocol announced the completion of a $10 million private token sale.

On April 23, the ROMW development team 0x& published a series of posts discussing the fourth season, updates, and more. One of the posts, titled "ROMW on CROSS Beginner's Guide," surprised players. According to the introduction, the "multi-chain architecture" adopted by ROMW means that the games it runs on CROSS are completely independent of the existing Ronin servers, including independent game processes, token economics, and leaderboards.

This means that the developer is releasing the same game on other networks, and there is almost no economic relationship between the two. For example, xZeny tokens are its in-game tokens in CROSS, and players need to buy battle passes to obtain them. This has no connection with the eZeny tokens in Ronin, which also require purchase vouchers to obtain, and cannot be exchanged. If a player wants to play games on two servers using a single game account and wallet, he needs to use the network filters in the inventory to manage the assets he owns on each network.

ROMW's actions have caused great anger in the community, and players have strongly criticized it as a soft rug. After cutting the leeks of Ronin community players, it is looking for another way to continue to defraud players' assets.

It is reported that in previous seasons, players will receive end-of-season ranking rewards in the form of eZeny tokens, which will be exchanged for temporary practical $RUPI, which can be traded on the decentralized exchange of the Ronin network. Affected by the recent series of events, the price of $RUPI has plummeted, and the price of NFT has also dropped to the lowest point. Therefore, those players who invested time and money in the original game will basically lose everything.

For ROMW's switch to CROSS, players generally expressed anger and incomprehension, and ridiculed CROSS as just a fake ecosystem full of robots. Some developers also said that ROMW's move was only because game development needs to continue to obtain resources and financial support, and Ronin, which has many top Web3 games and is open and unlicensed, obviously cannot provide the support that ROMW wants.

But no matter what, for ROMW, which has overdrawn its reputation and harmed the interests of players, it is already hopeless to re-establish an active player community.