If you strip away the buzzwords, co-publishing is just two people carrying the same couch through a narrow hallway. One person has the muscle. The other person knows the route. If either of them tries to do it alone, the couch scratches the walls and everyone gets mad.
That’s how I read the new @YieldGuildGames playbook. Studios bring the “couch” — the IP, the core gameplay loop, the art direction, the daily cadence that keeps a player logging in. YGG brings the “route” — quests that turn curiosity into action, a guild-shaped community that turns solo play into social habit, and a Launchpad that turns participation into a timed moment of access. When it works, it feels less like a DAO doing marketing and more like an entertainment operator building a repeatable distribution machine through #YGGPlay.
The reason this matters is simple: web3 games don’t just compete on fun, they compete on friction. In web2, if I’m curious, I download and play. In web3, curiosity often has to survive a gauntlet: wallet choices, chain choices, transactions, and the underlying fear of doing something wrong. A studio can ship a brilliant game and still lose 90% of its potential players before the tutorial ends, just because the first step feels like paperwork.
Co-publishing is one way to buy down that friction without buying it with dumb inflation. Instead of “emit tokens until people show up,” the goal becomes “build a route people actually enjoy walking.” That’s where YGG’s toolset is uniquely valuable: quests are a guided route, points are a progress bar, and Launchpad access is the little treasure chest at the end of the hallway.
I like to think of YGG’s co-publishing model as a three-layer sandwich. The studio owns the taste: game design, retention mechanics, content cadence, community tone. YGG owns the plate: discovery surfaces, quest rails, creator amplification, and guild coordination. The Launchpad is the receipt: it’s where the attention gets priced, not with ads, but with participation and $YGG-aligned behavior. If the sandwich tastes good, the plate makes it easier to eat, and the receipt tells you the business can survive.
Let’s use three partnership “shapes” as a lens: Delabs with a title like GIGACHADBAT (leaning into casual, meme-native energy), Proof of Play with an Arcade-style ecosystem (multiple games and loops under one umbrella), and an indie team like Gigaverse (where community intimacy can be an advantage, not a weakness). These aren’t the same kind of studios, and that’s exactly the point — co-publishing only becomes a real model when it works across different species of games.
For a casual game in the Delabs lane, the biggest economic battle is not content depth — it’s replayability per minute. A casual degen game wins when the session starts fast, ends with a laugh, and makes you want “one more.” That makes creators and clips extremely powerful, because the game’s marketing is literally the moment-to-moment chaos people can share. In that world, YGG’s value is: turning “I saw a clip” into “I did a quest” before the novelty wears off. Quests are basically the handshake between meme culture and measurable user acquisition.
Economically, that looks like a conversion stack: impressions become clicks, clicks become quests, quests become points, points become Launchpad eligibility, and Launchpad moments become a new burst of attention that can be routed back into the game. The studio benefits because it gets high-intent users, not drive-by tourists. YGG benefits because the whole loop makes “playing through YGG” feel like a lifestyle, not a one-off.
For Proof of Play’s Arcade-style approach, the economic story is different. Arcades aren’t one game; they’re a habit. You don’t go for one title — you go because the space itself feels alive. That fits perfectly with a quest-and-discovery hub, because quests can stitch multiple mini-experiences into one weekly routine. Instead of asking players to fall in love with a single universe, you ask them to show up to the same place and try the next machine.
Here, YGG’s role becomes a “traffic controller.” If the Arcade is the mall, YGG is the map at the entrance that tells you where the fun is today. Co-publishing economics in this setting can be structured like an affiliate relationship (quest-driven referrals and revenue share on player spend), a token-aligned partnership (allocations tied to measurable retention cohorts), or a hybrid where YGG helps fund distribution in exchange for upside on both revenue and token events.
The indie lane — something like Gigaverse — is where co-publishing can be most misunderstood. People assume indie teams want big budgets and glossy campaigns. What they usually want is consistency and community that doesn’t disappear after the first spike. Indies can build deep loyalty, but they often lack the megaphone and the scaffolding that turns loyalty into sustainable growth.
That’s where YGG’s community layer can behave like a “guild guild.” YGG can help an indie title recruit the right kind of early players — the ones who actually like learning systems and sticking around — by shaping quests that reward real play rather than shallow clicks. Instead of paying for generic users, you cultivate a reputation-driven cohort. The studio gets a player base that feels like a core community, not a rented crowd. YGG gets a title that can anchor longer campaigns, not just short-lived hype.
Now let’s talk about the money, because co-publishing only survives if the incentives are legible.
In web2 publishing, the publisher typically pays for UA and takes a cut of revenue. In web3, the temptation is to replace that with token allocations and call it a day. That’s where things go wrong: token allocations without revenue alignment often produce short-term excitement and long-term resentment, because players feel like they were recruited as exit liquidity.
A healthier co-publishing model mixes three kinds of upside.
First is revenue share tied to real economic activity: in-game purchases, battle passes, cosmetic sales, or other spend that reflects actual fun, not speculative churn. This forces everyone to care about retention, not just installs.
Second is token allocations tied to behavior and time: vesting schedules, distribution tied to quests and participation, and launch moments that reward committed players rather than pure capital. If the token exists, it should behave like a long-term community instrument, not a flash sale.
Third is cross-game event value: collaborations like “map tie-ins,” themed seasons, shared quests, or crossover cosmetics that create a multiplier effect. These crossovers are not just cute — they are distribution arbitrage. When two communities overlap through a shared event, you reduce the cost of acquiring users because the trust is already partially transferred.
This is why cross-game events matter so much in the YGG Play universe. A crossover is basically a bridge that lets one game borrow the other game’s trust. If a LOL Land player sees a GIGACHADBAT themed moment inside their routine, the new title doesn’t feel foreign. It feels like a neighboring district in the same city. That’s how you turn a hub into a brand.
But co-publishing also introduces a hard problem: attribution. Everyone wants to believe they drove growth. Studios believe the game did the work. Hubs believe distribution did the work. Creators believe content did the work. If you don’t solve attribution, partnerships turn into quiet arguments.
This is where YGG’s quest system can act like a measurement layer. Quests can be designed as trackable actions: “complete tutorial,” “win one match,” “play three days in a row,” “reach level X,” “bring a friend.” That turns marketing into observable behavior. Then revenue share and token allocations can be anchored to that behavior instead of vague promises. The more the partnership is tied to measurable cohorts, the less it relies on trust alone.
There’s also a strategic tension in this model that deserves honesty: co-publishing is only as strong as the weakest part of the couch carry. If the studio ships a game that isn’t fun, no quest system will save it. If YGG pushes a game too hard that doesn’t deserve the spotlight, it risks poisoning its own discovery layer. A hub’s brand is only as credible as its curation.
So the real question isn’t “can YGG co-publish?” It’s “can YGG keep its taste sharp?” Because once YGG becomes a discovery layer, it becomes a gatekeeper. That’s power, but it’s also responsibility. If YGG Play starts listing mediocre experiences just to keep the calendar full, the audience learns to stop trusting the menu.
There’s another risk: the “tourist problem.” If incentives are too front-loaded, players show up for points and leave as soon as the campaign ends. That creates a fake kind of success: big spike, dead tail. The fix is to structure quests like a staircase, not a vending machine. Early quests should be easy and fun, but later quests should require genuine engagement that correlates with retention. You don’t punish newcomers — you simply reserve the best upside for people who actually stay.
In that sense, co-publishing economics is really about building a shared discipline around retention. Studios bring content updates. YGG brings recurring campaigns and seasonal moments. Creators bring clips and guides that keep the funnel warm. The Launchpad becomes the periodic reward event that makes long-term participation feel worth it. And $YGG becomes the alignment battery in the middle — not a random ticker, but a membership asset that connects discovery, quests, and access.
If YGG nails this, the result is bigger than any single partnership. It becomes a repeatable machine: studios plug in, YGG routes attention through quests, creators make the culture portable, and Launchpad moments convert commitment into opportunity. Players stop asking “what’s the next airdrop?” and start asking “what’s the next season?” That shift — from farming to fandom — is where sustainable web3 gaming actually lives.
If YGG fails, it fails in predictable ways: weak curation, incentive tourists, misaligned token designs, and partnerships where nobody can agree what success looks like. But if it succeeds, YGG doesn’t need to be the studio that builds every hit. It becomes the place where hits are born with a community already waiting.
That’s the real co-publishing thesis: not “YGG helps games launch,” but “YGG helps games land.” Landing means the game arrives with an audience that stays, spends, creates, and returns for the next crossover. And if that happens consistently, “playing through YGG” really does start to feel like entering an entertainment brand — a city with recurring festivals, familiar faces, and a calendar you actually care about.
