“Earning $180 a month is more than twice the average salary of a Filipino worker.” — This is the most frequently cited shining example of the YGG scholarship model.
“Players get 70%, the guild takes 10%, and the middle manager gets 20%. Is this considered exploitation?” — This is the sharp question that has lingered in the air around the model.
The debate surrounding Yield Guild Games is a classic microcosm of the Web3 world: is it a utopian experiment that empowers technology and achieves digital equality, or is it a new form of exploitation wrapped in a narrative of progress?
Pro: The dawn of a digital utopia
Supporters believe that YGG has constructed a blueprint for a fairer digital future:
· Lowering barriers for universal access: It breaks the high asset thresholds of traditional games and early P2E games, allowing players from low-income regions around the world to access global digital economic growth solely based on skills and time, creating tangible livelihoods. This has revolutionary social significance.
· Reshaping ownership relations: Through blockchain certification, the assets and value created by players are no longer unconditionally occupied by game companies. Despite the fees, YGG's scholarship and sharing model establishes a transparent, contractual value distribution mechanism, returning part of the profit rights to the producers.
· Evolution from 'play to earn' to 'play to own': YGG is transcending early financialization models by recording players' skills and contributions through Soulbound Tokens (SBT), building an on-chain reputation system. This means players are accumulating not just transferable wealth, but also inalienable 'digital human capital', laying the foundation for broader collaboration in the future. This points to a self-governing future where individuals truly control their digital identities and assets.
Con: The cloud of new exploitation
Critics have torn away the veil of idealism, pointing out its potential commodification crisis:
· The intensification of labor alienation: When gaming behaviors are priced (70% sharing), players become alienated from 'playing for pleasure' to 'laboring for output'. Games become digital factories, and players turn into 'digital migrant workers'. The behavior of YGG's treasury managing assets and optimizing yield portfolios is viewed as the 'capital side' in the digital age, while global scholars become dispersed 'labor forces'.
· The injustice of risk transfer: Players bear the main risks: game economy collapse, token plummeting, project parties running away, the time invested by players instantly depreciates. Meanwhile, YGG, through a diversified asset portfolio and financial reserves, can hedge and transfer risks. This asymmetric distribution of risk and reward is a core argument of exploitation theory.
· The illusion of governance power: Although it claims to be decentralized governance, the core development roadmap and major partnership decisions may have negligible influence from ordinary token holders. Real power may still be concentrated in the hands of the founding team and early capital, and the so-called 'community ownership' may just be a rhetoric to attract participation.
Beyond binary oppositions: An experimental complex digital production relationship
Perhaps simply defining YGG as 'utopia' or 'exploitation' is biased. It is more like a complex social experiment in the early stages regarding new types of production relationships in the digital world.
It indeed brings economic opportunities that are impossible under traditional models, while also exposing new power and equity issues against the backdrop of global flows of capital, technology, and labor.
The value of this debate lies not in drawing immediate conclusions, but in ongoing examination and questioning. Where the YGG model ultimately leads depends on whether it can resolve these contradictions in practice: Can it design a fairer risk-sharing mechanism? Can it move community governance from form to substance? Can it cultivate games that truly allow players to enjoy themselves, rather than merely being 'digital sweatshops'? The answer will determine whether this experiment leads to a more inclusive digital society or merely repeats the inequalities of the old world.
