In the regular Tuesday maintenance window, Splinterlands added the option to buy credits with GLUSD and GLX, as announced in the town hall.
For those unfamiliar, GLUSD and GLX are tokens on the Genesis League Sports platform developed by the Splinterlands team, and they have a functionality similar to DEC and SPS, respectively, on the Splinterlands platform.
While GLX can be obtained in multiple ways, from a year-long airdrop to SPS stakeholders to GLX staking rewards, in the past for holding packs, or simply by buying on the market, for GLUSD the ways to get it are not as many. Just from the market or by converting GLX to GLUSD, which only makes sense economically when GLUSD goes above its peg (similarly to DEC on Splinterlands).
Why It Makes Sense to Have the Options to Buy Credits with GLUSD/GLX?
For three reasons, mainly.
In case of GLX holders who receive the airdrop for being a SPS stakeholder (or for different reasons) want to move these rewards back into the Splinterlands ecosystem, if they choose to buy credits instead of selling GLX on the market to buy Splinterlands assets with the SWAP.HIVE they obtain, they won't put selling pressure on the price of GLX. Another benefit is that credits are guaranteed to have a fixed value, as long as Splinterlands supports this means of payment. One may also consider purchases with credits generate affiliate commissions. The downside is credits are soulbound and you can't move from your account, all you can do is spend them on the products where purchases with credits are allowed. That's a pretty big downside to consider.
For new players that may be attracted by the GLS platform and who want to check out the Splinterlands platform, especially if they are not crypto savvy, avoiding Hive-Engine operations (other then sending tokens there) is a great idea. Credits is something they may actually understand much better and it's a more streamlined process.
New utility for GLX and GLUSD
Would I Buy Credits with GLUSD/GLX?
Provided I'd still want to move assets from GLS to Splinterlands (I stopped doing that), would credits be an option for me?
Well, I consider myself an advanced user of Splinterlands, and as such, I don't avoid Hive-Engine, quite the opposite. I also love to have the freedom of movement with my assets as much as possible, and you can't have that with credits.
So, unless it's a very niche, short-term case, where I'd find this useful, I don't use credits anymore.