Games, or YGG, is one of those projects that really changed the story for normal gamers. I’m not just looking at it as a chart or a token symbol. I see it as a big global guild that tried to answer a simple question: what if gamers who don’t have money for expensive NFTs could still join the game, still earn, and still feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves?
At its core, Yield Guild Games is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a DAO, that focuses on investing in NFTs and assets used in blockchain games and virtual worlds. They buy and manage game assets like characters, land, items, and then connect those assets with players who want to play and earn from them. Instead of a single company hiring employees, it’s a community-owned guild where people hold the YGG token and help govern how the treasury and strategy move forward.
I’m going to walk you through how it works, how the structure is designed, why the YGG token matters, what YGG Vaults and SubDAOs actually do in simple language, and how their partnerships and ecosystem turned it into more than just an “Axie guild”. I’ll also add how I personally see their journey, because for me, YGG is not a perfect project, but it is a very important experiment in connecting gaming, DeFi, and community.
First, let’s talk about the basic purpose. YGG started with the idea that play-to-earn games offer real income opportunities, but the entry cost is high. In many early games, like Axie Infinity, you couldn’t even start playing without buying a set of NFTs, and these NFTs were often very expensive for people in countries where salaries are low. YGG stepped into that gap. They’re a guild that buys these NFTs and then lets players use them under different models, often called scholarships. The player uses the NFT to play the game and earn in-game tokens. Part of the rewards go to the player, part go to the guild, and sometimes part go to community managers who support everything. This simple idea made it possible for tens of thousands of people, especially in places like Southeast Asia and Latin America, to step into Web3 gaming without paying those high upfront costs.
Now, what makes YGG special is that they didn’t stay as just one big pool. They built a layered structure. At the top, you have the main DAO. The main DAO is like the central guild hall. It holds the main treasury, makes the big strategic decisions, and issues the YGG token. YGG token holders can submit proposals and vote on matters such as which games to focus on, how to allocate treasury funds, or how to design new reward schemes. Even holding a small amount of YGG still counts as membership in the guild, which means you technically have a say in its direction.
Under this main DAO, they introduced something very clever: SubDAOs. I personally love this part of the design because it feels very natural for gaming. Different games have different economies, different communities, and even different cultures around them. A single, central structure can become too slow or too generic. So YGG created smaller, specialized DAOs called SubDAOs, each focused on a specific game or sometimes a region. For example, there can be a SubDAO dedicated to Axie Infinity, another to League of Kingdoms, and others that focus on regional communities like YGG SEA for Southeast Asia. Each SubDAO has its own wallet, its own community leader, and often its own token, and it manages the operations related to that game or region.
You can think of it like this. The main DAO is the global brand and the big treasury. The SubDAOs are like local branches or specialized squads. They decide which in-game assets to buy for their specific environment, how to structure scholarships, how to reward local players, and how to communicate with that sub-community. This modular design means YGG can scale hard without losing local focus. One SubDAO can experiment with a new reward model for its game, while another SubDAO can test a different approach, and the main DAO still benefits from all the learning and revenue that comes back.
Another important piece of the design is the YGG Vaults. When I’m looking at YGG as a DeFi-meets-gaming project, the vault concept is where that DeFi flavor really shows. The YGG Vault is a smart contract system where users can stake their YGG tokens to support specific parts of the ecosystem and, in return, receive rewards. Each vault can be targeted to a different purpose. One vault might be linked to certain game tokens, another might be linked to NFTs, and another to some internal activity like a new SubDAO or a regional program. When you stake into a vault, you’re basically telling the protocol, “I want to support this particular stream of activity and I’m ready to share its upside.” In return, you can receive yield based on how that part of the ecosystem performs.
From a personal angle, I see these vaults as a way of letting community members choose their level of risk and focus. Someone might be very bullish on a particular game, so they stake YGG into a vault that backs that game’s assets. Another person might trust the broader guild and stick with a more general vault. The protocol gives flexibility, but it also expects that the community will care enough to understand what they’re backing. That’s the emotional side: this is not passive yield farming where you don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes. You’re literally backing real players and real games.
The YGG token itself is the lifeblood of this entire system. It has three big roles. First, it’s a governance token. Holding YGG lets you participate in voting and in discussions on how the DAO should move forward. Second, it is used for staking, especially in these vaults, where stakers can earn more YGG or other rewards depending on performance. Third, it acts as a kind of membership and coordination token. If you hold YGG, you’re considered a member of the guild, and this can unlock access to specific content, community events, whitelists, and other benefits. Different documents and analyses over the years highlight that YGG’s design assumes this token will connect the people who want to build the future of the guild with the treasury and the decision-making tools.
Of course, behind all these mechanics there is the very human part: the players and the scholarships. YGG became famous for its scholarship model during the early Axie Infinity boom. A scholarship, in simple terms, is when the guild lends an NFT team to a player. The player plays the game every day, earns the in-game tokens, and then the rewards are split between the player, the guild, and sometimes a manager. This model allowed more than sixty thousand players to join Web3 gaming at one point, especially in countries where the income from these games could meaningfully support a family or at least reduce financial pressure.
I’m very honest about this part. The play-to-earn model has had ups and downs. When token prices were high, the scholarships looked almost magical. When token prices dropped and game economies slowed down, many people felt disappointed and even hurt. But the big thing YGG tried to do, and still tries in my view, is to build a long-term guild that is not tied to one single game or bubble. That’s why they kept expanding into more games, new metaverses, and broader Web3 education instead of staying only as an Axie farm.
Let’s also look at the ecosystem and partnerships around YGG, because no guild grows this big alone. From early on, YGG attracted backing and collaboration from strong Web3 players like Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital, and it integrated deeply with the Ronin sidechain that powers Axie Infinity. Over time, the guild has invested in and partnered with many games and virtual worlds, including metaverse projects like The Sandbox and other web3 titles. Animoca, for example, lists YGG among its major portfolio projects and sees it as an important layer between gamers and the many games they back.
This network effect is powerful. When YGG joins a new game, they don’t just bring money; they bring an army of players, managers, and content creators. A new game that partners with YGG can quickly see players onboarding, tutorials being made, community quests being run, and real activity flowing into its economy. For the players, it means more choice. If a player starts in one game but wants to move to another, they can sometimes do so within the same guild family. For me, this is where YGG feels less like a single project and more like an infrastructure layer for the whole Web3 gaming world.
The SubDAO story continues into regions as well. YGG SEA, for example, is a regional SubDAO that focuses on Southeast Asia. It has its own token, its own reward design, and its own community reward and liquidity reward mix to incentivize players and liquidity providers in that region. The SEA token can be staked, and community members can benefit from reward programs tailored to their local context. This structure shows how YGG is trying to respect the fact that gaming and economics are not the same in every country.
One thing I also notice is how YGG is shifting from being only a scholarship guild to becoming what some analysts call a full-stack Web3 gaming conglomerate. They’re experimenting with on-chain reputation systems, guild protocols, and deeper tooling so that guild activity can be tracked and rewarded in more nuanced ways. Newer updates and analyses describe YGG as sitting at the intersection of gaming, DeFi, and the creator economy, rather than just as a yield-chasing machine. In simple words, they’re trying to grow from being a “rent my Axie team” brand into a long-term platform for Web3 gamers, creators, and investors.
I’m not blind to the risks here. A lot depends on whether Web3 games can keep building sustainable economies, not just inflationary reward loops. If future games focus more on fun and long-term value, and less on short-term high APYs, then guilds like YGG will need to adapt their models, offer more than just yield, and deepen their community value. But in a strange way, that pressure is healthy. It pushes YGG to think beyond the easy years and design structures like SubDAOs, Vaults, and reputation systems that can survive in a more mature environment.
If you zoom out, the YGG ecosystem today looks like a web of relationships. At the center, you have the YGG token, the treasury, and the core team plus community. Around that, you have SubDAOs for different games and regions, each with their own players, leaders, and sometimes their own tokens. Inside those SubDAOs are the NFTs and in-game assets, like land, characters, items. Surrounding all of this is the bigger circle of partners: game studios, infrastructure providers, investors, and educational projects. Inside that outer circle, you have the players themselves and their stories, from someone in a small town who got their first taste of crypto through a scholarship, to streamers and content creators building careers on top of Web3 games.
When I talk about YGG to a community, I like to keep one picture in mind. Imagine a huge digital guild hall where people from many countries log in, choose different games, borrow different gear, and go to battle in different worlds. Some are grinding for tokens, some are competing at high levels, some are testing new games, some are building tools, and some are voting on where the guild should go next. That guild hall is messy, noisy, and not always perfectly organized, but it is alive. That feeling of a living, breathing online guild is exactly what YGG tried to capture and turn into an on-chain structure.
So, when you hear “Yield Guild Games is a DAO for investing in NFTs used in virtual worlds and blockchain games”, remember that behind that clean sentence there is a whole universe of mechanics and emotions. They’re using SubDAOs to break a giant guild into many focused mini-guilds. They’re using YGG Vaults to connect staking and yield with specific parts of the ecosystem. They’re using the YGG token to turn community members into co-owners and decision-makers. They’re partnering with major Web3 projects to bring players and liquidity wherever it’s needed. And they’re constantly trying to evolve from a hype-cycle phenomenon into a long-term, community-driven institution for Web3 gaming.
I’m not saying they’re perfect or risk-free. No project at the edge of gaming and finance ever is. But if you care about the story of how players began to own more of their time and their assets, YGG will always sit there as one of the early, loud, and ambitious chapters in that story
