Author: Zen, PANew

Recently, the development team of "Ragnarok: Monster World" (ROMW) 0x& took the lead in launching a "multi-chain architecture" server on CROSS Protocol, announcing that the game progress and token system would be completely independent of Ronin. This move immediately sparked outrage in the community, criticizing it as a "soft rug" relocation and expressing concerns about player rights and ecological prospects.

Just two days after this announcement, Sky Mavis co-founder and COO Aleksander Larsen publicly accused ROMW on X on April 26 of "ignoring suggestions, secretly signing contracts with other chains, and seriously violating the cooperation agreement," and announced the termination of the professional partnership with 0x&. This series of events pushed the originally deep cooperation into a trust crisis, and while the Ronin ecosystem was slightly damaged, the future of ROMW became even more concerning.

The Controversy: Ronin and ROMW Each Hold Their Ground

"The game team ignored our suggestions and has since lost the support of the community. Worse, they secretly signed an agreement with another blockchain, violating our agreement. Given our long-standing support for them, this is naturally surprising. Trust has broken down to such an extent that we decided to terminate our professional partnership with the development team of 'Ragnarok: Monster World' 0x&."

Recently, Aleksander Larsen, co-founder and COO of Ronin's parent company Sky Mavis, condemned the ROMW development team for "betraying" Ronin and announced the split. The honeymoon period between the two parties, which lasted only a year, has come to an end.

"Ragnarok Online" (Chinese translation: 仙境传说) is an MMORPG launched by South Korean developer Gravity in 2002. This classic online game has attracted over 100 million players worldwide and generated over $2 billion in revenue. Utilizing the classic IP of Ragnarok, 0x& launched the tower defense game "Ragnarok: Monster World" after obtaining authorization from Gravity, and announced in April 2024 that it would debut on the Ronin blockchain. According to the official press release at the time, 0x& not only established a partnership with Ronin but also received investment from Sky Mavis.

In response to Ronin's accusations, ROMW denied having reached any secret agreements, stated that it had fulfilled all contractual obligations, and had transparent communication with Sky Mavis as early as February 2024, including a direct meeting with Aleksander Larsen. ROMW also stated that regardless of the challenges faced in the future, it would continue to operate the game on Ronin, further expressing: "We believe that decisions made without regard for community interests will ultimately harm the uniqueness of Ronin."

Both sides hold their ground, and the community is unable to discern who is telling the truth. However, in this controversy, both Ronin and ROMW's actions and attitudes have left players and the community feeling somewhat disappointed.

From Love to Hate: From Sweetheart to Cow Lady

In fact, the day before Aleksander Larsen officially announced the split with ROMW, some community players had already noticed a clear rift between the two parties. In a post about the recently heavily promoted fishing game "Fishing Frenzy" in the Ronin ecosystem, Ronin co-founder Jihoz openly criticized ROMW, bluntly stating that the game was merely a "poor imitation of Clash Royale." Jihoz claimed that ROMW was looking to make money on other platforms and directly belittled it, stating that they were now only focused on "Ragnarok Landverse: Genesis."

"Ragnarok Landverse: Genesis" is also based on the Ragnarok IP, and its game design is closer to the classic original, essentially making it a Web3 version of "Ragnarok Online." Genesis was developed by the meta-game ecosystem developer Zentry (formerly GuildFi) and launched on Ronin at the end of March this year. Prior to this, Zentry's flagship game studio Maxion had conducted a soft launch of "Ragnarok Landverse" on the BNB Chain in September 2023 after obtaining IP authorization, and the Genesis series released on Ronin can be seen as the latest adaptation and continuation of this version.

Jihoz's fierce criticism led some community users to feel that his wording was overly harsh, and many players found it difficult to understand this inconsistency. After all, they were the ones who initially praised ROMW, and now they are the ones stepping on it. Additionally, in his statement announcing the split, Larsen mentioned that due to ROMW's violation of trust regulations, they would take "punitive" measures—removing the game and its assets from Sky Mavis products, including deleting ROMW's related NFTs from the Ronin market.

This decision also faced community skepticism, with some users claiming it was overly centralized, a "typical manifestation of authoritarianism," and that an open blockchain should not go to such lengths. There were also Ronin supporters who are not ROMW players advising: "You shouldn't delist their NFTs from your market. It's not the end user's fault; this primarily harms the trading capabilities of Ronin users," hoping not to further damage the credibility of the Ronin ecosystem.

Subsequently, Larsen released a statement indicating that they had listened to community feedback and would not completely remove Ragmon's assets from the Ronin market, but would remove the checkmark, indicating that the official does not recognize or support this game. However, it has now become much more difficult to search for ROMW-related NFT collections in the Ronin market. After ROMW officially announced "seeking a new home" and following a confrontation between the two parties, the prices of related NFTs have plummeted. In this contradictory situation, the only ones truly harmed are the players who once believed in the endorsement of Ronin's official and the quality of ROMW.

Can ROMW and Its New Love CROSS Have a Future?

ROMW's "new love," CROSS Protocol, is a dedicated sidechain based on Ethereum that supports on-chain games and NFT ownership verification. It is developed by multi-platform game provider NEXUS, with governance entrusted to the Swiss-registered non-profit organization Opengame Foundation. In March of this year, CROSS Protocol announced the completion of a $10 million private token sale.

On April 23, the ROMW development team 0x& released a series of posts discussing the fourth season, updates, and more, one of which titled "ROMW on CROSS Beginner's Guide" left players astonished. According to the introduction, the "multi-chain architecture" adopted by ROMW means that the game running on CROSS is completely independent of the existing Ronin server, including having independent game progress, token economics, and leaderboards.

This means that the developers are releasing the same game on another network, with almost no economic relationship between the two. For example, the xZeny token is the in-game token in CROSS, which players need to purchase a battle pass to obtain, and this is unrelated to the eZeny token that also required a purchase in Ronin, and they cannot be exchanged. If players wish to use a single game account and wallet to play on both servers, they need to use a network filter in their inventory to manage the assets they own on each network.

ROMW's actions have sparked outrage in the community, with players strongly criticizing it as a soft rug, hoping to continue deceiving players for their assets after cutting off the Ronin community players.

It is reported that in the previous season, players would receive seasonal ranking rewards in the form of eZeny tokens and exchange them for the temporary utility token $RUPI, which could be traded on the decentralized exchange of the Ronin network. Due to the recent series of events, the price of $RUPI has plummeted, and the prices of NFTs have also dropped to their lowest points. Therefore, those players who invested time and money in the original game will essentially see their efforts go to waste.

Regarding ROMW's shift to CROSS, players generally expressed anger and confusion, mocking CROSS as merely a fake ecosystem full of robots. Some developers stated that ROMW's actions were solely due to the need for continuous resource and funding support for game development, and that Ronin, which has multiple leading Web3 games and is open and permissionless, clearly could not provide the support ROMW desired.

However, regardless of the circumstances, for ROMW, which has already overdrawn its credibility and harmed player interests, the hope of re-establishing an active player community seems bleak.

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