TL;DR:

• We use Web3 tech to back a completely optional reselling feature that guarantees you own the skins and other collectibles you buy, and can sell them to other players whenever you want.
• We will never require anyone to use Web3 to make the majority of purchases in the Golden Tides store - you're free to do so, but you can also just buy stuff using a credit card.
• We will never introduce pay-to-win systems to Golden Tides.

It's Back-End Tech, Not A Feature

Hi. We're Psychedelic Games. We're an indie studio creating Golden Tides, a pirate-themed,  free-to-play action MOBA. If you're into games like League of Legends, PUBG, or Sea of Thieves, we may be right up your alley.

We're creating a game we ourselves love to play and think breathes some life into genres that have stagnated over the past decade or so. We're also hardcore competitive gamers that hate pay-to-win bullshit and other anti-competitive systems that exploit players or lock them into platform ecosystems.

We've all spent tons of money on skins, announcer packs, deck boards, and other stuff in games we eventually stopped playing, leaving us with an account that doesn't get used that's full of unlocked goodies that we can't even give to a friend, let alone sell to recoup the $25 we spent on Pulsefire Ezreal after a five-game losing streak. All that stuff becomes a sunk cost eventually.

That's why we're building a secondary market alongside the game itself. In other games, you're essentially renting your skins, but in ours, you truly own them. We hope you play Golden Tides forever, but if you don't, you've got the option to sell what you bought to someone else.

It's like Pokemon cards. When you purchase cards you can resell them after because you own them. Only in our case, you're buying and selling in-game cosmetic items, not OP tournament-banned Squirtles or something.

When we set out to build this market, we needed a technical solution that would do a few things:

• Keep costs low. Third-party platforms like Steam facilitate item transactions, but they charge you service fees up to 15% of the cost of the item, and you're limited to on-platform credit. We're able to make it all happen at a 8% transaction fee and you can withdraw your money whenever you want, in whatever currency you want.
• Reduce Scam Possibilities. Traditional cosmetic trading often happens in gray markets like eBay or G2G, where transactions go against game policies and expose players to scams and chargebacks. Our Web3-powered marketplace provides a safe, policy-compliant way to trade, ensuring every transaction is secure, verifiable, and free from fraud.
• Facilitate global transactions. We want to enable anyone, anywhere to be able to buy and sell on the market.
• Guarantee your ownership. Once you buy something from us, we can't take it back.

After considering our options, we ended up deciding Web3 tech was the best option for this market. To access the secondary market you'll need to interact with Web3 tech.