Ryu Games has started the beta launch of Flame, a new web3 game store and marketplace, to better serve the PC gaming market with easily usable NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

Rick Ellis, the founder of Steam, has joined the company as Chief Product Officer. He will leverage his decade-long experience in console, PC and mobile game development to drive the growth of Web3 adoption in games.

Flame is a multi-channel game wallet, store and launcher that users integrate through a simple social login.

Ellis said games that use NFTs and cryptography are in their infancy, but their potential has already attracted millions of gamers to play these sometimes very simple games.

“The past few years have seen incredible progress in reducing the negative environmental impact of blockchain and reducing the cost of transactions. Meanwhile, serious game developers are building the first generation of AAA titles built around open economies.

“The last missing piece before mass adoption is a user experience to launch these games. The technical and UX challenges that Flame solves will bridge the gap between gamers around the world and the next Internet – one that belongs to users, not to central authorities,” he added.

Ross Krasner, CEO of Ryu Games, said the fact that millions of people are battling the friction and pain of onboarding to play crypto games and use NFT is a testament to how a shift in Blockchain technology can be fundamental for human-technology interaction.

“For the first time, people truly own digital assets and can interact in systems without permission. Gaming is always the first to adopt new technologies, and for me, Flame is the last missing piece before Web3 games are only “games”.

“We’re thrilled to have Rick, who built Steam, which today has nearly 30 million concurrent users. To put that into perspective, only about 3 million people have ever interacted with an NFT,” he said. -he declares.

In October 2021, Valve announced the banning of blockchain games and NFTs on its Steam platform, and ironically, the Steam founder joined Ryu Games and is working on his Steam for Web3.

Prior to founding Sharkbite Games, Ellis began his gaming career building the dev kits for Xbox and GameCube, then went on to build the digital distribution service and video game marketplace that eventually became Steam and was hired. by Valve Software.

During his career, he developed the physics engine for Half-Life 2, worked on well-known titles like Counter-Strike and Guild Wars 2, developed the Xbox Dev Kit, and also worked on the GameCube console. Ellis was also vice president of production at Z2, which was acquired by King.