Rashomon: Ronin and ROMW have different opinions

Recently, 0x&, the development team of Ragnarok: Monster World (ROMW), took the lead in launching the "multi-chain architecture" server on CROSS Protocol

Recently, 0x&, the development team of Ragnarok: Monster World (ROMW), took the lead in launching the “multi-chain architecture” server on CROSS Protocol, announcing that the game process and token system will be completely independent of Ronin. The community immediately went wild over this move, criticizing its “soft rug” move and worrying about player rights and ecological prospects.

Just two days after the incident was announced, Sky Mavis co-founder and COO Aleksander Larsen publicly accused ROMW of “ignoring advice, secretly signing contracts with other chains, and seriously violating the cooperation agreement” on X on April 26, and announced the termination of its professional cooperation with 0x&. This series of events pushed the original deep cooperation into a crisis of trust. While the Ronin ecosystem was slightly damaged, ROMW’s future became even more worrying.

Rashomon: Ronin and ROMW have different opinions

“The team ignored our advice and lost the support of the community. Worse, they secretly signed an agreement with another blockchain, violating our agreement. This was naturally unexpected considering our long-standing support for them. Trust has been broken to such an extent that we have decided to end our professional partnership with 0x& , the team behind Ragnarok: Monster World.”

Recently, Aleksander Larsen, co-founder and COO of Ronin parent company Sky Mavis, published a post to slam the ROMW development team for “betraying” Ronin and announced a breakup with them. The honeymoon period between the two parties, which lasted only one year, has come to an end.

Ragnarok Online (Chinese translation: Ragnarok Online) is an MMORPG launched by Korean developer Gravity in 2002. This classic online game has attracted more than 100 million players and generated more than $2 billion in revenue. Following the classic IP of Ragnarok Online, 0x& launched the tower defense game Ragnarok: Monster World after obtaining authorization from Gravity, and announced in April 2024 that it would debut on the Ronin blockchain. According to the official press release at the time, 0x& not only established a partnership with Ronin, but also received investment from Sky Mavis.

In response to the accusations of Ronin co-creation, ROMW denied that any secret agreement had been reached, fulfilled all contractual obligations, and had transparent communication with Sky Mavis as early as February 2024, including a direct meeting with Aleksander Larsen. ROMW also stated that no matter what challenges it faces in the future, it will continue to operate games on Ronin, and further stated: “We believe that decisions made without regard for the interests of the community will ultimately undermine the uniqueness of Ronin.”

Both sides have their own opinions, and the community is unable to tell which is true and which is false. However, in this Rashomon incident, the behavior and attitude of both Ronin and ROMW have disappointed players and the community.

From love to hate: Candy becomes Mrs. Cow

In fact, one day before Aleksander Larsen officially announced the breakup with ROMW , some community players had already discovered that there was an obvious rift between the two parties. In a post about the fishing game “Fishing Frenzy” that Ronin ecosystem has recently promoted, Ronin co-founder Jihoz criticized ROMW without hiding his criticism, saying that the game was just a “poor copycat version of Clash Royale.” Jihoz said that ROMW was going to make money on other platforms, and directly criticized it, saying that he was now only focusing on “Ragnarok Landverse: Genesis.”

“Ragnarok Landverse: Genesis” is also based on the Ragnarok IP, and the game design is closer to the classic original. It can basically be regarded as the Web3 version of “Ragnarok Online”. Genesis was developed by the meta-game ecosystem developer Zentry (formerly GuildFi) and launched on Ronin at the end of March this year. Prior to this, Zentry's flagship game studio Maxion initially soft-launched “Ragnarok Landverse” on BNB Chain in September 2023 after obtaining the IP licensing cooperation, and the Genesis series released on Ronin can also be regarded as the latest adaptation and continuation of this version.

Jihoz's fierce criticism made some community users think that his words were a bit too harsh, and many players found it difficult to understand this inconsistency. After all, they were the ones who praised ROMW in the early days, and they are also the ones who are stepping on it now. In addition, Larsen, who posted a statement to express his split, also mentioned in his statement that because ROMW violated the trust regulations, they would take “punishment” - removing the game and its assets from Sky Mavis products, including deleting ROMW's related NFTs from the Ronin market.

This decision has also caused it to be questioned by the community. Some users called it over-centralized