Development studio Sky Mavis has announced changes to the SLP breeding fees in their tactical battle game Axie Infinity. Players will now need to pay 3 times as much SLP tokens and half the amount of AXS tokens to create one new NFT game character.
While Sky Mavis needed to overcome the challenge of increased popularity of Axie Infinity, the community had enough. Every social media post by the Vietnam-based development team would receive comments telling the team to ‘fix SLP’. SLP, or Smooth Love Potion, is the token players can earn by winning in-game battles.
SLP is a crypto token, meaning that players can sell the token on the market. Other gamers can then buy the tokens, and use these to create – or breed – new Axie game characters. Every Axie has a limited amount of ‘breeds’, and the costs for breeding increase every time they are being used.
Axie Infinity is the most played blockchain game on the market with over 2 million players per day. On a monthly basis the Axie ecosystem registers over $685 million in NFT trading from more than 636,000 traders. It’s not without reason that Sky Mavis refers to their community as a digital nation, but the players – also called Lunacians, citizens of Lunacia – have got to put food on the table.
Price SLP a problem in developing countries
Before the announcement, the native SLP token was $0.041. After the change the price shot up more than $0.05, settling at the current $0.047. As a result, breeding one Axie will cost roughly $85 in SLP and $55 in AXS. That brings the total costs to $140 to create one Axie game character. However, every player needs 3 of those.
Three months ago SLP was still in the $0.10 range, way down from it’s all-time high of almost $0.40 in July this year. Because SLP is a crypto token, the game allows gamers to make money while playing. In developing countries worst hit by the COVID pandemic, Axie Infinity became a safety net for entire communities in poverty. . As the token price drops, people’s incomes dwindle. As a result, this game economy has a real-life impact, making people more vocal about token price changes.
The elephant in the room here is that there’s only demand for SLP when there’s an influx of new players. As the price of the token stumbles, the potential to make a living from the game disappears. It’s a vicious cycle. Suddenly monthly SLP earnings fall below the minimum wage levels, which – again – becomes an issue when families rely on that income. Sky Mavis recognizes this, and plans to add more features to their game economy in the future. However, we can’t guarantee that Axie Infinity will keep making money for gamers in need.
Sky Mavis is working on various new products that will add to the Axie Infinity ecosystem. They will overhaul the battle system, and introduce land gameplay. In addition they will introduce resources, allow part upgrades. It’s not unlikely that SLP will be required within one of these new products.