Gala Games lays out clear plans to rebalance the scales of economic power in its interlinked stable of play-to-earn platforms, including the farming game Town Star. The upgrades affect player earnings and, after careful consideration of user feedback, will now be introduced ‘gradually’.
First things first, a bit of background on the changes. Gala Games put out a blog post on February 24th outlining plans to change the mechanism for how players within its ecosystem earn Gala Power. Gala Power determines the number of in-game NFTs a player can put to work to earn Gala Coin (GALA) and TOWN STAR coin (TOWN).
Until now, the amount of TOWN a player held was a huge contributing factor to their overall amount of Gala Power. The formula to work out Gala Power was:
Gala Power = GALA + (TOWN*2)
In an attempt to pivot away from the huge influence that TOWN, and its holders, have over the entire Gala Games economy, the platform came up with a new formula. Gala Power was to be based directly and proportionally only on GALA. Therefore, they would introduce a new feature called Town Power. According to Gala Games’ blog post, Town Power ‘will limit the amount of TOWN which can be earned’ from Daily Star Challenges. Here’s the formula for it:
This slightly complicated arrangement represents a ‘pseudo bonding curve’ which means that ‘as the amount of TOWN increases, the amount required to be held increases as well.’ Basically, it ‘means that in order to earn TOWN, users will need to have an amount of TOWN in their accounts.’
It’s an incentive for users to hold TOWN and prop up the coin’s value. But it was also a genuine attempt to redistribute the power currently held by a very small number of TOWN-hodling whales. According to Gala Games’ research, the top ‘300 earners of TOWN receive roughly 70% of the total issuance.’ The platform feared that such inequality would deter less well-resourced players from participating and ultimately lead to Town Star’s economy and audience withering away.
So what happened?
The community spoke up.
And to be fair to Gala Games, it listened to what its users said. ‘The community has been heard loud and clear,’ today’s blog post reads. ‘So we will be slowing things down and taking a more gradual approach to introducing the changes than we had previously planned.’
What this amounts to is adjusting the Gala Power formula more gradually, over a period of three months. Over the next 90 days, Gala Games will incrementally reduce the amount of impact that TOWN has on Gala Power. By the end of that period, a player’s TOWN will go from being multiplied by two and contributing to the Gala Power to being multiplied by zero, so it will count for nothing. This move is seen as a compromise with angry, full-throated gamers and should give them enough time to wean themselves off their reliance on TOWN.
What is Town Star?
After reading about TOWN and earning tokens, you might wonder what Town Star is all about. In short, it’s a competitive farming game. Players need to build a farm, optimize their production cycle, automate processes, in order to win the weekly or monthly competition. Here they can earn GALA tokens.
However Town Star also features daily challenges for those who are less hardcore into the competition. The daily challenges can earn players TOWN tokens. The amount someone can earn depends on the NFTs they place on their farm. Each NFT boosts the maximum potential TOWN earnings.
Both GALA and TOWN are cryptocurrencies which gamers can use to buy NFTs from the Gala Games Store, or sell on the open market. In addition both token holdings influence a player’s potential to earn as well, stimulating the earlier mentioned Gala Power and the new Town Power.
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