Game Recommendation Service RAWG.io launched by Kanobu founder Haji Mahtiyev, the ICO was postponed from September of this year to March next year. There are two reasons: the failure of the presale for $ 5 million and the unfavorable situation in the ICO market.
The company itself told about the situation in the official telegram channel. In the same place, she noted that the situation will not affect in any way either plans to work on the service or existing partnerships.
RAWGCan I speak Russian now?
In order to better understand the situation, it is necessary to define the terms. There are three key terms in this news — crowdsale (aka ICO, aka public placement of tokens), presale and, in fact, tokens.
A crowdsale or ICO is an event when a company with a product using blockchain and/or cryptocurrency sells part of its tokens. This is often a form of crowdfunding, when investors buy up assets or the currency of the future service.
Presale is the pre—sale of a large number of tokens before the ICO. As a rule, it is focused on large investors. The interest of the latter is that with the pre-sale of a large number of tokens, the service can offer them a discount.
Tokens in the case of RAWG are certain means by which the user can pay inside the service. The investor receives these funds from the company in exchange for money.
Why RAWG.io did you need an ICO?
Recall that RAWG.io — video game aggregation and recommendation service. The authors themselves like to compare it with the IMDb site, where you can find information about any phenomenon in the world of cinema.
Initially, it was not related to the crypto topic. However, this spring it became known that the service has an interest in ICO. Today, the authors of RAWG consider the initial placement of tokens as one of the tools for attracting an audience and working with future advertisers.
It is assumed that the service will reward users with tokens for gaming activity, and will also allow advertisers to use them to buy traffic at a discount.
You can read more about this in our interview with the technical director of the service, Samat Galiev.
So what happened anyway?
RAWG was preparing to sell $5 million worth of tokens to unnamed investors (our colleagues with DTF are talking about two companies). It was not about selling assets, but about the future opportunity to spend money on advertising within the service.
But something went wrong. Before the start of the crowdsale, the companies withdrew from the deal. In the comments for App2Top.ru Haji Mahtiyev did not answer what their decision was related to. He only mentions that “the relationship did not work out.”
Problems with the presale seriously affected RAWG’s ICO plans. Due to the cancellation of the agreement, the company decided not to launch a crowdsale yet and, as a result, a system of rewards and tokens in the service.
However, the latter is explained, among other things, by the unfavorable situation in the market of public placement of tokens. “The turbulence of the cryptocurrency market and the decline in confidence in the ICO as a tool for attracting resources has been going on all year. In such weather, launching our own tokens for gamers seemed too risky to us. We decided to postpone the crowdsale and the launch of the token economy for the future, when conditions will be better,” Maktiyev said.
What does this mean for RAWG and the market?
The founder of the service assures that no global changes should be expected in connection with the current situation: “This will not affect the development of RAWG as a product in any way, we continue to build a cross-platform discovery service for games.”
From the point of view of the market, everything is a little more complicated. In the Russian gaming industry, RAWG is one of the brightest projects related to ICO (although, as its representatives note, ICO is not a core feature at all, the main functionality is not tied to blockchain and tokens).
RAWG’s consultants and investors include Igor Matsanyuk, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Game Insight, Vyacheslav Makarov, Head of R&D Wargaming, and Mikhail Lyalin, CEO of Zeptolab. Among the partners of the service are Playrix, Gaijin Entertainment, Xsolla.
The attention of market leaders and their trust in the product raise the stakes. It seems that the future relationship of the Russian gaming industry with ICO may depend on whether RAWG will be able to successfully enter the crowdsale and implement the story with tokens.
Also on the topic:
- Why the Russian IMDb about games needed a blockchain: interview with RAWG techlideHaji Mahtiev strengthened the team RAWG.io the top manager of Svyaznoy and the editor-in-chief of Roy!
- Kanobu founder’s service attracted €1 million from Igor Matsanyuk, Mikhail Lyalin and Wargaming
- Sources: RAWG, hackernoon, DTF