GameDev musings - Indian retail investors vs P2E vs Tax amendment vs RMG gamers

Hey Friends, Greetings from Bangalore 💗

Indian retail investors vs P2E vs Tax amendment vs RMG gamers

Retail investors role in NFT, Indians placed record bets in US stock market. Stats show that it grew 200% in 2021, i.e from $250M in 2020 to $500M in 2021 💹  

The same retail investors are willing to take advantage of the blockchain, P2E, and NFT ecosystem, purely from an investment point of view. That’s a reason why most of the P2E players are from Asia/Asia Pacific, SEA, compared to the western market - usually, it’s the western gamers who are IAP purchasers compared to Asia Pacific players. 

WIIFM as a game developer? From Indian gamers/audience perspective: It’s a curse in disguise for games that are built around P2E/NFT, as you have more spectators than gamers who are backing with NFT purchases during drops and getting onboarded in discord. Can you account for them as gamers and build a game for them?

• Can a hyper-casual game with score-based multiplayer or challenge game mode with payout will help you to address the community. The recent investment from Polygon in the Rush app (from the Hike team) is something that I’m closely monitoring to see the results 👀

• Real money game, RMG players in India will they give a shot at NFT or P2E game? As of now, I doubt it esp. for P2E games. They follow the same flow as the RMG game instead of cash-in cash-out, here you pay in with their currency or stable currency and get a payout as cryptocurrency. The challenge is that most of the RMG players are from Tier2 and 3 cities, educating them with the process of getting a wallet, buying crypto coins is a long process - it is still a lot about finding. 

Indian Govt 2023 tax amendment:

• 30% tax on income from virtual digital assets

• TDS to be imposed on payments for the transfer of crypto assets at a rate of 1% for transactions over a certain threshold

💡 Bottom line is that the tax amendment has legitimized the investment and it will get the corporates to participate in the trend very aggressively. Trade with ease in India

Cartic P, @iCartic