Town Star Pauses Play to Earn Rewards - Play to Earn

Town Star, the flagship game for Gala Games and a long time presence in the blockchain gaming space, pauses TOWN rewards for both players and Node operators on July 19th, 2022. In a problem not uncommon in the play to earn scene, the TOWN token had become much too inflationary. And so, major changes are needed.

It wasn’t long ago that Town Star was announcing new rewards for their players. But now, in a sudden move, they cut off all TOWN rewards to players and Node operators.

As one of the older games in blockchain gaming, Town Star was built at a time when the space was still new. Before gaming companies hired economists to help with their game models! And as such, The Town Star economy was an experiment in many ways. And now, much like another OG blockchain game, Axie Infinity, Town Star finds itself in need of a major overhaul!

No more TOWN for you!

Effective as of July 19th, 2022, all TOWN emissions for players and node operators were halted. The team hopes to reward node operators in the future and is still recording data about which nodes are running the game servers. But, as you might imagine, this leaves little incentive to play the game or run a Town Star Node!

Now, of course, Gala Games wants to spin this as a positive for the game. And certainly, they deserve credit for recognizing a problem and taking the steps needed to stop the bleeding. As painful as they might be. But it’s still not a good look. Especially for a company with a dozen games in development and only one (Town Star) actually released.

TOWN coin minting chart

With new TOWN token emissions dropping to zero, you may think this would help to relieve some of the selling pressure. But, without the play to earn potential, player’s interest in spending TOWN decreases as well. The team says that they are considering introducing a burn mechanic for TOWN. This would allow players to purchase special NFTs with TOWN tokens, but have the spent tokens sent to a burn address rather than kept by the system.

But it’s more than just the economy that’s the problem. Apparently, Town Star runs a client authoritative model. This means those with the tools and knowledge can hack the game pretty easily and send false data back to the servers. That’s really not good for a competitive game with cash-equivalent rewards! And so, Town Star is being rebuilt with a new game system called Godot. Godot not only moves game verification to the servers but also allows the team to implement updates at a quicker pace.

We have no timeline on when the Town Star economy might return. But with a game engine switch and a major overhaul to the entire game economy, I can’t imagine it will be a quick fix. The Gala team is also going to want to make sure that they get things right with Town Star 2.0.