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Makers of Axie Infinity are hopeful that launching the game on the Apple platform will spurt growth. They are also hopeful of Apple making policies friendlier for NFTs in the future.
In the latest development, Sky Mavis, the creator of the popular blockchain-enabled Axie Infinity video game, announced that the video game will be now available for download on the Apple App Store.
Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn crypto game that allows gamers to battle one another while collecting or trading earning rewards as well as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The latest step will allow Axie Infinity to regain many of the customers that it lost during the crypto winter of 2022.
Last year, Sky Mavis launched the latest version of the game dubbed ‘Axie Infinity: Origins’. As of now, the company plans to launch the game in a select number of countries within South East Asia as well as Latin America. Jeffrey Zirlin, the co-founder of Sky Mavis believes that the limited rollout will help the company “gather data around retention rates” before an eventual global launch.
Sky Mavis said that some of the countries where Apple users will be able to download this game include Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Zirlin added that the company has been working with Apple for over a year to gain approval for the launch of ‘Axie Infinity: Origins’ on the App Store.
This is a major milestone considering that Apple has historically made it difficult for crypto players to establish a base on its platform.
Hope that Apple Allows the Trading of NFTs
For blockchain-based Web3 gaming platforms, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) play a crucial role as in-game assets and see a high activity of trading. However, as we know, Apple has made it extremely difficult for users of their smartphone applications to buy, sell and trade NFTs.
But Sky Mavis executive Zirlin is optimistic that Apple’s policies will eventually evolve in favor of Web3 companies. He wrote:
“We are hopeful around adding in-app purchases for NFTs and Apple allowing for the linking to third-party marketplaces. We expect there to be progress in the future.”
Apple’s hefty 30% tax on in-app sales and restrictions over the purchase of digital assets like NFTs have stifled the adoption of certain blockchain-enabled applications. “That is definitely one of the variables that makes things hard,” said Zirlin. “But I do know that there are larger players than us fighting that fight. For example, Epic Games.”
But Zirlin is hopeful of gaining growth momentum once iPhone users download the game. He said: “Seventy percent of our users come from family and friend referrals. So actually being on the App Store… that’s really important for our growth machine.”
‘Axie Infinity: Origins’ is the “most-played web3 game right now” having more than 1.5 million downloads. No other player in the Web3 video games space has managed to achieve any closer success as achieved by Axie Infinity. As per the data from CryptoSlam, Axie NFTs clocked $2.3 million in trading on less than 140,000 transactions.