US gamers who play Shrapnel will not be able to cash-out their in-game assets when the blockchain extraction FPS first launches, according to the game’s head of economy Francis Brankin.
Unlike gamers in Asia and Europe, who will have unrestricted access to the game, US players will not be able to convert their earnings into real-world currency to avoid a potential run-in with US securities regulators.
The Securities and Exchange Commission regards cryptocurrencies as securities and therefore under its jurisdiction, and has been cracking down on crypto companies it sees as breaching its regulations.
“[US players] will be able to do everything every other player can do, but they can’t cash out,” Brankin told Cointelegraph.
“Because that’s what makes it a security to the US player, as soon as they can realize monetary value, that’s where the problem comes in.”
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Brankin said he thought the cash-out ban would be temporary as Neon, the studio building Shrapnel, would “soon enable US users to bridge capital accrued from Shrapnel to their bank accounts”.
Shrapnel will be a free-to-play blockchain game. Players can jump in and start playing without spending anything upfront, and may not even realize the game is blockchain-based.
The game is set in 2038 when earth is being bombarded by fragments of an asteroid, rendering a swathe of the globe uninhabitable.
The fragments (sigma) are valuable, and must be collected by operators who, armed to the teeth, venture into the forbidden zone.
Neon is said to be releasing an early access build of Shrapnel in December.
To understand more about Shrapnel, see the Polemos interview with Neon CEO Mark Long.
