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The Missing Puzzle Piece in Web3 Gaming: Infrastructure

Spend five minutes in a Web3 gaming Twitter Space, and you’ll hear the same complaint: “We need better games and more players.” Obvious, right? But the real question isn’t what’s missing—it’s why it’s missing.

The truth is, Web3 gaming doesn’t just have a content problem; it has an infrastructure problem. And for players, that’s the real barrier to entry.

The PC Gaming Parallel

If you rewind a couple of decades, PC gaming faced a similar crisis. Multiplayer was clunky. Setting up a match meant navigating through IP addresses, third-party clients, and a labyrinth of forums. Then came Steam. A single platform for game distribution, updates, friends lists, instant messaging, and matchmaking. It didn’t just make PC gaming better—it made it accessible.Web3 gaming is stuck in its pre-Steam era.

What’s Broken?

Right now, most Web3 games expect players to juggle a fragmented mess of tools:

• Gamertags & Identity: There’s no universal, persistent identity system across games. Every new game means a new wallet, a new account, and a new hassle. Solutions like ONT ID offer a decentralized identity system, allowing players to carry a single gamertag, reputation, and assets across multiple games without needing to create new logins.

• Instant Messaging & Social Features: Gaming is inherently social, yet Web3 lacks seamless in-game chat, party systems, or cross-game communities. Tools like ONTO Wallet integrate messaging and social features directly into a player’s wallet, helping bridge that gap.

• Reputation & Trust: Traditional gaming has matchmaking ratings and anti-cheat systems to ensure fair play. In Web3, reputation is still a Wild West. Orange Protocol enables on-chain reputation and trust scores, allowing games to implement fairer matchmaking, anti-cheat measures, and rewards for positive behavior.

• Game Hosting & Accessibility: Many games are stuck between centralized servers and experimental decentralized hosting solutions that aren’t as plug-and-play as traditional servers.

• Perceived Complexity: Players don’t want to think about gas fees, bridging assets, or wallet security every time they log in. UX improvements need to abstract these complexities away.

The Fix? Web3 Needs Its Steam Moment.

For Web3 gaming to break through, it needs infrastructure that removes friction. Decentralized Identity (DID) can unify gamertags across games. On-chain reputation can make matchmaking fairer. Integrated wallets with social features can replace Discord and Twitter as makeshift gaming hubs. Decentralized hosting solutions can make game servers permissionless yet stable.Web3 gaming doesn’t just need better games—it needs to be easier to play them. Right now, it’s like trying to play Counter-Strike in 2002. The games might be fun, but the infrastructure is the real boss fight.