Refereum is a blockchain-based platform that promises to pay you to watch and play video games. Here’s our review.
What is Refereum?
Refereum, found online at Refereum.com, connects game developers with gamers, streamers, and viewers.
The platform aims to solve a crucial problem in the gaming community: developers pay artificially high costs to reach fans. Twitch and YouTube influencers have the largest followings on the internet, but they don’t see the returns you would expect based on the size of their audience.
“Gaming as a career is unattainable for most players,” explains the official website.
This inefficiency is due to the presence of intermediaries and middlemen. Platforms like YouTube take a significant cut of each video’s advertising revenue. Developers also need to pay for ads on these platforms, with a significant cut going to the middleman.
The end result is that developers are paying too much to reach their audience, gamers aren’t being rewarded for viewing or playing games, and influencers aren’t capturing the full potential of their audience.
With that in mind, Refereum wants to cut out the marketing middleman by directly rewarding influencers and gamers to promote and play video games.
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How Does Refereum Work?
Refereum solves crucial problems in the gaming industry using an open market approach. That approach is designed to reach across borders and languages. It’s also designed to reach across influence levels, so “anyone with any level of influence can participate, including regular fans or individuals by simply sharing a game with a friend.” Refereum will appeal to more than just big name influencers – like streamers with millions of viewers.
Developers can choose what counts as a referral. They can count installs, for example. However, they can track more advanced referrals – say, by only counting installs from gamers who actually interact with the game, like gamers who play at least 5 hours of the game, for example.
Meanwhile, developers can reward gamers based on specific engagement activities. They can reward gamers with a penny in exchange for joining a Twitch stream during a 12 hour launch window, for example. Or they can award a flat $10,000 eSports tournament prize.
To increase adoption of the platform, Refereum has already partnered with Twitch, the world leading video game streaming website. Refereum has also partnered with Unity, the most commonly-used game engine in the world, to create in-game bounties.
The entire Refereum platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain. It uses smart contracts and ERC20 tokens. Smart contracts send payments to anyone involved in the Refereum ecosystem who completes a specific task. Previously, giving out rewards like this has been difficult because of legal barriers and geopolitical restrictions.
Some of the key functions of the Refereum blockchain include:
- Refereum Contract: This is the primary Refereum contract, maintained by Refereum.
- Refereum Sample Contract: Reference referral program contract, provided in Refereum plugin tools and an SDK, including a referral fee distribution mechanism.
- Games: Developed by other developers, these games can use customized referral contracts to allow developers to have freedom in their criteria.
- Refereum Plugin and SDK: This is provided by Refereum to streamline the usage of smart contracts for C# and C++ programming languages.
Benefits Of Refereum
Refereum aims to deliver benefits to the three main parties involved in the gaming ecosystem, including gamers, developers, and influencers.
Gamers
- Earn money from video games
- Share games to earn commissions
- Trade or spread Refereum tokens (RFR) like cash
- Earn profits from gaming
Influencers
- Earn more money by referring through Refereum
- Extra earning options are available through earn.Refereum.com
- Secure profits even if you have a small following
- Do it all with no legal fees
Developers
- Attain unparalleled cost effectiveness
- Secure easily scalable direct marketing
- Set any criteria for paid growth
- Offer cash prizes for eSports, clans, tournaments, etc.
Who’s Behind Refereum?
Refereum’s team consist of industry veterans from the gaming industry and digital advertising world. Key members include Dylan Jones (Founder), Alistair Doulin (Chief Technical), Oleksii Mattiasevych (Smart Contract Author), and Sloane Earl (Business Development).
Prior to founding Refereum, Dylan Jones created some of the highest-grossing Facebook and mobile titles of all time.
Refereum Conclusion
Refereum aims to create an incentive system for gamers and streamers, allowing game developers to pay gamers and streamers in exchange for in-game rewards, in-game activities, tournaments, referrals, and more. All transactions are performed with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ultimately, Refereum aims to deliver benefits to the three major parties in the gaming ecosystem, including developers, gamers, and streamers/influencers. These three parties are all losing in today’s ecosystem: developers pay too much to reach their audience, gamers aren’t rewarded for their gaming, and influencers aren’t capturing the full potential of their audience. Refereum aims to solve these problems with a unique, blockchain-based platform.