Let me sit next to you for this one.
Not as some distant voice, but like a friend who loves games and wants to tell you a true, messy, hopeful story.
I’m going to talk about Yield Guild Games in a way that feels human. No hard jargon, no cold distance. Just people, games, money, fear, and hope, all mixed together.
At the end of the day, that is what YGG really is: a story about people who tried to turn playing into a path to a better life.
Possible titles you could use
Yield Guild Games – A Guild Of Gamers Trying To Change Real Lives
From Bedrooms To Blockchains – The Human Story Of Yield Guild Games
Yield Guild Games – After The Hype, A Community Still Fighting For Players
Playing For More Than Fun – Inside The Journey Of Yield Guild Games
The first spark – one man, some NFTs, and a simple act of kindness
Before the token, before the DAO, before any big conferences, there was just a man named Gabby in the Philippines, looking at a game called Axie Infinity on his screen.
He saw something strange happening.
People wanted to play this game. It was cute, fun, and on the blockchain. But to start, you needed to buy NFT characters. For someone with a good salary, that cost might feel small. For someone in a poorer country, it could be more than a month’s income.
So Gabby did not write a whitepaper. He did not launch a token.
He did something very normal and very human.
He lent his own NFTs to people who could not afford them.
Players started using his Axies. They played every day. They earned tokens from the game. They kept a big part of the earnings for themselves and shared a smaller part back to him, because the NFTs were his.
Suddenly, this was not just “gaming.”
For some, it was rent. It was school fees. It was being able to buy food without panic.
Imagine that for a second.
You are playing on your old phone, in a hot room with a fan that barely works, and the coins on your screen decide whether your family eats better this week.
That feeling, that moment, is where Yield Guild Games really began.
Gabby looked at this and thought something like this:
If this small group, with just my NFTs, can earn this much
What happens if we build a huge pool of NFTs
What happens if thousands of people can share them
What happens if this is owned by a community and not by one single person
That is how the idea of a guild was born.
Not a company. A guild. A shared home for players.
Becoming Yield Guild Games – a guild built on the internet
With time, Gabby and a few others turned this idea into something bigger. They called it Yield Guild Games.
They did not want YGG to be a normal company where a few bosses own everything and the gamers are just users. They wanted it to be a DAO, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. In simpler words, a structure where rules live in code on the blockchain, and where people who hold the YGG token help guide what the guild does.
The basic dream was simple to say and hard to do:
Gather money together
Use that money to buy NFTs and in-game assets from good games
Let players around the world use those assets for free
Share the earnings between the players, the community managers, and the guild
Give token holders a say in big decisions
They’re trying to build something that feels like an old-school MMO guild, but with real money and real ownership attached to it.
In those early days, something beautiful happened.
Word spread. People from the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Venezuela, and many other countries joined as “scholars.” They did not need money to start. They just needed time, effort, and a cheap device.
They would wake up, log in, and play. They fought battles, did quests, learned strategies, and taught each other. They shared tips in Discord, comforted each other when earnings dropped, and celebrated when someone did well.
In poor neighborhoods, families started saying things like
“my son is paying the bills with a game”
It sounded crazy. But for a moment, it was real.
How the machine looks under the hood
Now, let us lift the hood slowly, but still talk like humans.
You can imagine YGG as a three-layer structure.
At the top, there is the main DAO.
In the middle, there are SubDAOs.
At the bottom, there are the players.
At the top, the main DAO and its treasury
The main DAO is like the big shared bank and the council room of the guild.
There is a large treasury on-chain. This treasury holds:
YGG tokens
NFTs and items from many games
Tokens from partner projects
Some stablecoins to reduce risk
This treasury is not just sitting in someone’s pocket. It is controlled through smart contracts and a multisig wallet. That means important moves of money need several signers to agree. It lowers the chance that one person can do something crazy with the funds.
On top of that, there is governance. People who hold YGG can vote on proposals. These proposals can decide things like which games to focus on, how to use the treasury, what new systems to build, or how to reward the community.
In theory, this is a world where players and supporters share power.
In reality, it is still a journey. Some people care deeply and vote often. Many others stay silent. Like in any democracy, it is a work in progress.
In the middle, the SubDAOs
Now picture the guild breaking into smaller “chapters” or local groups. These are the SubDAOs.
One SubDAO might focus on a specific game. Another might focus on a region, such as Southeast Asia or Latin America.
Each SubDAO:
Holds a part of the guild’s NFTs and assets
Has local leaders and community managers who know the language and culture
Organizes players, events, and scholarships in that area
SubDAOs are like smaller families inside a big clan. They are closer to the players. They know who is struggling, who is improving, who needs training, and who could become a leader.
At the bottom, the players and scholars
Then comes the base layer. This is where the real magic is, and also where the real pain is when things go wrong.
Players, often called scholars, borrow NFTs from the SubDAOs. They play. The games reward them with tokens or items. Those rewards are then split.
Usually, the scholar gets the biggest share, because they are the one grinding day after day. Community managers get a smaller part for organizing, teaching, and holding things together. The guild takes its share to refill the treasury and support more people.
When this balance is fair, everyone feels seen.
When it is not, people feel like workers in a factory they do not own.
That line is thin, and YGG is always walking it.
YGG Vaults – where your tokens meet the guild’s work
Now imagine you are not a scholar. Maybe you are not even a gamer. You are someone who has YGG tokens and wants to support the guild and share in its activity.
This is where the vaults come in.
A YGG vault is a smart contract where you can stake YGG tokens.
Inside that vault, something simple happens. The guild sends in reward flows from gaming activity. These can be tokens from games, YGG tokens, or other incentives tied to specific SubDAOs or strategies.
If you stake YGG into a vault, you are basically saying:
“I want to back these activities. I’m locking my tokens here. In return, I want a share of what this part of the guild earns.”
If the games connected to that vault do well, more rewards go in. Stakers share those rewards. If they do badly, there is less.
The vault is like a pipe connecting real player activity to your position as a token holder. It is a way to make the token more than just a casino chip. It tries to link YGG to the actual life of the guild.
Everything is on-chain. You can see how much is staked. You can see what rewards are available. You can claim them when you want, according to the rules.
From quick yield to deep reputation – treating players like people, not just addresses
In the wild DeFi and play to earn boom, a lot of people were only chasing yield. Put tokens here, get more tokens there. No history, no memory, no soul.
YGG went through that phase too.
Then the music stopped.
After the crash, something had to change.
Simply paying people to show up was not enough. When prices dropped, many left.
So YGG slowly started shifting from “yield farming” to “reputation building.”
One of the big tools for this is the Guild Advancement Program, called GAP.
Think of GAP as seasons, like in a game. During a season, players can join quests and missions. Some are simple, like trying a new game. Others are deep, like mentoring new players, making guides, organizing events, or winning tournaments.
When players complete these missions, they do not just earn liquid tokens they can sell.
They earn soulbound tokens, SBTs.
These are badges that stick to their wallet forever. You cannot trade them. You cannot send them away. They are proof of action.
Over time, a player’s wallet becomes more than a number. It becomes a story.
You can see which games they played
You can see what roles they took
You can see if they showed up again and again or only once
On top of that, YGG can mix in locked YGG inside a profile. Tokens that are locked are a sign that you are not just dipping in and out. You have skin in the game.
Together, this reputation system tries to say something important:
You matter not only because of how much money you have.
You matter because of what you have done, what you have given, and how you have grown.
We’re seeing YGG experiment with this more and more. If It becomes fully mature, a player’s on-chain profile could work like a CV for the digital world.
The YGG token itself – a quiet heartbeat on-chain
Now let us talk softly about the token.
YGG has a fixed maximum supply of one billion tokens. No more can be created beyond that cap. The supply was divided among early investors, the team, the treasury, and the community.
Over time, locked allocations unlock, especially for the team, investors, and community programs. That means more and more YGG has become liquid in the market.
This has two sides.
On one side, unlocks can hurt the price if there is not enough demand. People see new tokens enter the market and fear selling pressure. That has happened to YGG at different times. The price today is far below the highs of the peak bubble.
On the other side, if YGG continues to be used for governance, staking, access, and reputation, then more unlocked supply also means more people can join and take part.
When you look at YGG, it helps to watch a few quiet signals on-chain:
Is the number of wallets holding YGG slowly going up over months and years
Is more YGG being staked, locked, or used in quests, or is it just sitting in a few big wallets
Are governance votes happening and are more people joining them
Is revenue from games and SubDAOs feeding back into the system
These things will not trend perfectly. They will wobble. But over time, they tell you if the guild is becoming more alive or more empty.
The crash that hurt real people
We need to talk about the hard part with full respect.
When Axie and other play to earn games were on top, people were earning real money. Some made more in a day than they were used to making in a week.
Then, slowly at first and then very fast, prices began to fall. Game tokens lost value. What was once enough to support a family became barely enough to cover mobile data and electricity.
Imagine the emotional crash.
You have told your family you have found a new way to earn. You have left a job, or turned down one. You are playing for hours, telling yourself,
“It is okay. This is work. I am helping my family.”
Then one day you open the app and the numbers do not mean what they used to.
The reward tokens are worth a fraction.
Your body is tired. Your eyes hurt. Your bills are still there.
This happened to thousands of scholars, not just in YGG but across all guilds. Some felt angry. Some felt ashamed. Some felt lost.
Yield Guild Games could not escape that storm. The value of their own token crashed. Some of the NFTs in their treasury became almost worthless. People outside pointed fingers. People inside felt the weight of every decision.
This is where the story could have ended. A big rush, a big fall, and then silence.
But that is not what happened.
Instead of disappearing, YGG tried to change.
A quieter second act – rebuilding trust, one season, one event, one game at a time
In the years after the crash, YGG started doing something very simple and very brave: they kept showing up.
They held real events, not just online hype, especially in places like Manila. Developers flew in. Players met each other face to face. Workshops were held. People talked honestly about what went wrong with the old play to earn model.
They launched new seasons of the Guild Advancement Program, each time making the quests, tools, and apps a little better.
They worked with more games, not just one main title, trying to make the guild less dependent on a single ecosystem.
They created YGG Play, to help new games launch with real communities instead of fake numbers. They tried to build tools that other guilds could use, not just YGG alone.
It is not flashy work.
It is the kind of building that happens in long nights, quiet calls, and slow code commits.
From the outside, We’re seeing YGG turn from a loud speculation symbol into a kind of steady infrastructure. Not perfect, not finished, but still there.
Real risks that are still here
Even with all this effort, there are risks you should hold in your hands like real objects, not ignore like shadows.
There is market risk.
If web3 gaming never really takes off beyond a small crowd, the value of the guild’s assets will stay weak. Yields will be small. Growth will be slow.
There is governance risk.
If too much power stays in the hands of a few big holders or a small core team, the dream of a community-owned guild can fade into something that looks like a normal company wearing a crypto mask.
There is token risk.
More tokens can still unlock. If demand is not strong enough, that can push the price down. It can scare new people away, even if the actual building work is going well.
There is human and ethical risk.
If players feel that their work is not respected, if earnings are not shared fairly, or if they feel they are treated as replaceable workers, trust will break. And once trust breaks, repairing it can take longer than any bull cycle.
A realistic but hopeful future
Now let us breathe for a moment and imagine what success could look like, not as a fantasy, but as a realistic direction.
Imagine a world where millions of players have one core profile that follows them from game to game.
This profile is built from soulbound badges, earned by real actions, plus maybe some locked YGG showing long-term commitment.
When a new game launches, the developers do not just shout into the void. They can say:
“We want a hundred patient testers from Latin America with strong history in strategy games”
and the system can actually find them.
Players, in turn, do not have to start from zero every time. Their history goes with them. Their reputation has weight.
SubDAOs around the world would feel like local studios and agencies, run by people who started as scholars themselves. They would hold meetups, tournaments, training programs, and mental health sessions for players who are grinding.
YGG’s vaults would be fed by a wide river of income, not only from one or two old games, but from a mix of:
Tournament winnings
Creator economies
In-game markets
Publishing deals
The YGG token, in that world, would not be a lottery ticket. It would be more like a key, or a voice. You would hold it not just “to get rich,” but because it gives you a real say in how this huge living guild evolves.
Will it be easy to reach that world
No. Not at all.
But the path is there, and YGG is walking on it step by step.
A gentle ending, just between you and me
Let me talk to you directly now.
You are not stupid for caring about this.
You are not childish for believing that games could be more than distraction.
You are not naive for hoping that people in poor countries might use a phone and a guild like YGG to unlock new kinds of work.
You are simply human.
YGG’s story is not clean. It is full of sharp highs and deep lows. Some people made money. Some lost. Some felt inspired. Some felt betrayed. That is all part of the truth.
But inside that mess, there is still something worth watching.
People trying to design fairer systems for gamers.
Developers listening more carefully to players instead of just to investors.
Communities that survived a crash and are still here, building, patch by patch.
They’re not saints. They’re not villains. They are humans in a new frontier, learning in public.
If you ever decide to get involved with YGG, whether as a player, a builder, or a holder, go in with open eyes. Look at the on-chain numbers. Listen to the voices of scholars in communities. Ask hard questions about fairness.
But also, allow yourself a small, stubborn spark of hope.
Hope that a kid who loves games and has nothing else can find real chances in this new world.
Hope that work inside virtual spaces can earn real respect, not just real money.
Hope that one day, when we look back, we will say
“It was messy
but it was one of the first serious attempts to give power back to players.”
If Yield Guild Games keeps its heart close to the players, keeps learning from its mistakes, and keeps building slowly even when nobody is cheering, then It becomes more than a token chart.
It becomes a living proof that play, when shared with care and courage, can change lives.
And maybe, just maybe, a small part of your own story will be written there too.
