Good morning and Happy Monday. Welcome to another Polker AMA. This is the second week that we’ve been running it at a slightly different time. Next Monday, we will go back to 11AM EST / 3PM UTC. We have had a few questions come through on social media over the past week, which I will be answering. If there are any people asking questions live, I will answer them as well. But, just give it a few minutes to see if people are joining at this time, and if not, we will begin with the questions that have come through.
Okay, let’s start with the questions that have come through on social media. Salvo, we will begin with your questions.
The first thing you asked was, “How does the listing with Epic Games work? Will the game remain available forever or for a specific time? Or are there some factors to take into account?”
It’s the same as if we were to have the game available for download once it’s on mobile, that would be obviously like the App Store on Apple and the Play Store on Android. It’s a very similar feature to this. So, once we’ve done all the documentation and the game is there, theoretically, the game should be remaining there forever. Obviously, if any terms and conditions change down the line, or maybe jurisdictions that were removed, we may have to update things but it’s definitely an indefinite listing. It’s not like it’s there for one month and then we’ll be removed. So, once we have got the game available to download there, you would be able to just pull it directly from Epic Games and that’s a permanent listing on that one. So, the only thing that could change down the line is if there are terms and conditions that they update. Then they’d have to pause it to make sure that we were following them but that’s sort of an unlikely situation. Most likely, once the game is up there, it’ll be a permanent situation.
Second question from Salvo: “Given the opportunity to accumulate the token with today’s value, and given that it is probable the entire circulating supply can be purchased, what would happen in that case? Would it be a problem for the future of the ecosystem?”
Theoretically, the entire circulating supply could be purchased if it was available to be sold. It would require having all of them on the market. Unless every single person that holds $PKR has them for sale somewhere –obviously then, they’re not available– and with the amount that it’s in the staking pool (which is the majority of the circulating supply) that would stop that from happening.
Yesterday, we had these staking figures go out. In total, we’ve got 50 million (ETH) and 70 million (BSC). So, we’ve got about over 120 million tokens staked. So, it’s over 50% of the circulating supply — that is a huge amount of token there that’s unavailable for sale. And I’m assuming, even the non-staked tokens are also unavailable. So, it would be a very hypothetical situation. But yes, if they were all available to be bought and someone did buy all of them, it wouldn’t really have a huge issue on the majority of the ecosystem. The only issue that would come is that the DAO would be in the control of a single entity.
And the final question that follows on from that is, “Do you have the purpose of using the tokens, then a release would be necessary for the remaining tokens?”
If a single entity bought all of them, it stops the sell pressure. But it does mean that, like I said, all of you who are holding tokens need to sell them. It would be a very strange situation to have to add liquidity because someone bought everything. I think that’s normally dilution which is fairly frowned upon. If they bought everything, then burned them — it’s such a hypothetical situation. I don’t think there’s any way for us to ever get there; and if we did, I don’t know what we would do about it but it would make no sense for whoever it was to buy all of it and not do anything with it. I don’t think it’s a particularly realistic case for us.
Qipapi, thank you for joining us. I have got the answer to your question. You asked, “When will tournaments be opened in the games?”
So, we’re just checking on this. Obviously, we’re waiting for Epic Games Store to actually put the game on. And we’ve given them the current version, which is without tournaments. There’s a lot of paperwork back and forth. And with it being the beginning of summer, unfortunately, a few of them have been taking holidays. So, as soon as that’s all approved and the game is live, we will look at whether we are releasing the tournament modes directly or whether we are releasing that across all platforms.
So, I would say that we would hopefully have that out for you guys — I don’t want to give a date — I would like to say that we would have it out to you guys in the next 30 days but it needs to be checked whether we’ll release it with some other features such as cross platforms, or whether we will release it just with the STT mode. That needs to be a decision that we will look at once Epic Games puts the game out. Tournament mode is working. The matchmaking system is all good. Security-wise, there’s just one more piece that needs to be checked for now. But I don’t believe there is anything major that should give us an issue. So, we should be ready once Epic Games have gone back to us but I can’t have a more exact answer than that.
And GP who’s always coming through with a good amount of questions at the last minute. “Any news regarding Epic Games?”
Like I just said, there’s a lot of extra liability documentation regarding the fact that, obviously, we are a blockchain project. They are covering their backs, and I think it’s understandable especially that they would lump all blockchain projects together. So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re using tokens in the game, whether you’re just using NFTs, or whether you’re using a mix. So, I understand that some of these projects may be holding huge amounts of values within the game; or people are depositing other tokens — whether it’s Bitcoin or Ethereum — they’re liable. So, I do understand why they’re careful. In our case, we only have our NFTs. We’re not making use of money, you can’t deposit USDT or anything. It is slow, but I can see the reasoning. Hopefully, we’ll have that sorted out in the next couple of weeks. It’s not long, but I just can’t give it an exact time.
The second question from GP, I think, was the exact same question I answered before regarding the tournaments and the security.
The third question is, “How is mobile development going?”
It’s not going to be earlier than planned. We may have it working earlier than planned — which is good. The UIs and the wireframes are all operational and are all connected to the same backend. So, that’s all there. There are a few developmental changes. For Android, there’s a lot of different screen sizes. For Apple, it’s much easier since the only ones using iOS are Apple phones.
Obviously, in Android, there are huge amounts of different dimensions and qualities that we need. However, getting onto the Play Store at the end is a much quicker process than getting onto the App Store.
So, with Android, I don’t think we would have a lot of problems hitting that timeline. With Apple, the only risk is that once the game has gone through all security checks, then it’s in the hands of Apple themselves. Although we are non-gambling, we are a poker platform. And although we are not directly a crypto-earning game, we are a blockchain game. So, we are able to get through the App Store, but it may mean that, similar to Epic Games, it may take us longer.
We are moving forward as fast as we can with that. So, fingers crossed we get both of them out. The Apple one may take a little bit longer than the Android but as long as we start the applications early — hopefully we’ll get them in the earliest part of Q4 instead of at the end of it.
What proportion of full time devs is working on the mobile?
I would say there is only one person working full-time right now. We had some more working on mobile for the design stuff earlier. Right now, there is one person working full-time on mobile, and two people doing some of the parts and moving bits we already have and linking them to the mobile version. And the person who is working only on the mobile, they’re mainly building the UI. Because, obviously, if we just shrunk the one we already have, I think you would be zooming in a lot for each button — which is not what you would want to be doing when you’re in a game of poker. So, they’re just making sure the UI is looking good and ready to go on that one.
Let me go for a more general question here and that is: “How are you seeing the crypto markets, specifically the gaming industry, today based on your knowledge from other projects, partners, and competitors? How do you think things will evolve from here?”
I’m gonna give a very honest point on this one. It’s still one of those times where people are cautious. They’re cautiously optimistic — which is good. It’s the right side of cautious instead of cautiously feeble. So, there’s a lot of money on the sidelines right now. I think people are beginning to get their faith back in the crypto markets. But they’re sticking with what’s been proven — so that’s Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even Litecoin and Monero and some of the other longer, proven blockchain projects. When it comes to gaming, newer DeFi, some of the more NFT projects, when it comes to anything that’s high-risk, at the moment, people are still very speculative on these. It’s a good time to be building, in a way, but it all moves very fast at this point. It could be the end of this year, it could be the middle of next year. When the markets swing around, they swing around very quickly.
So, I know that a lot of people are sat still right now. There is a lot of cash on the sidelines in the crypto market — which wasn’t there at the end of last year. Everyone was still moving money out even if they’re at a loss, whereas now people who have the money are sat. I think the gaming and the lower market cap projects will be the last to be getting the favors. That’s just the way it is. The higher the risk, people need to have faith in the entire industry but I do believe we are getting much closer to that point than we were at any point during last year. I definitely have faith that it will be back, probably sooner than we expect. And it will definitely be some time when we don’t expect it. It will be a rapid turning point. I know everyone is looking forward and waiting for that to happen — and that’s me and everyone here included. I think it would be very exciting. As always, it’s gonna be an adrenaline-filled, endorphin-filled event. Everyone will be watching charts. But we’re not there yet. So, let’s see what the rest of this year brings. My opinion is that it would be more likely to be during next year, the beginning. But, let’s have a look at where we go on that one.
Last question from GP is, “Are there any major updates coming up soon?”
Once we have the Epic Games listing out, I do believe that we will have the MacOS MVP live on that too running free so we’d be able to have those side by side. That would be quite a big update. And then, by the end of July, we may need to do some security testing on this. We will have made a lot of features that will include the tournament, and some of the new features we’ll be adding. Some of it won’t be directly visible but it will speed up joining tables, matchmaking on servers, and obviously, the in-game social systems functionality. The in-game social system on the backend when it comes to the tournament and jumping into adventure mode will be extremely fast. It may not appear to be a big change, but security-wise, it’s a little bit better. The main thing is that it’s going down when we’re adding newer features such as if we do the multi-table tournaments, STT, and start adding newer features that this is going to make the entire process — from the user’s perspective — a very, very quick process between forging keys, opening chests, joining tournaments. Everything will be — once you’re in the game, you’re in the game. So, those delayed times will be gone.
So, that’s something we have got going. It’s a big update code architecture-wise. It may not appear a big update to what you’re actually seeing other than the speeds. But it does mean that things that are added down the line would be much easier for us to add and much quicker for you to use. So, that’s probably the biggest thing we have on that coming up soon.
We will have announcements, and we are gonna keep on going. Obviously, nothing is slowing down with us. We will be moving these AMAs back to their normal time from next week. Just remember that we will have the transcript from this one up online within the next couple of days — that will be on Medium.
Feel free to ask questions at any point on social media or on the AMAs. We will be here at 11AM EST / 3PM UTC next Monday. Ask any questions — be it on Telegram, Discord, Twitter. We’ll do our best to answer if we have the time. If you want to ask on Monday, just raise your voice and we’ll bring you up. Otherwise, everyone have a great week and we’ll catch you here at a different time but at the same place! See you guys!
