The Sandbox Unveils Open Publishing and 100M SAND Game Maker Fund

Hong Kong - The Sandbox, a prominent decentralized gaming virtual world under Animoca Brands, held its inaugural Global Creators Day in Hong Kong, where it revealed plans to empower creators and achieve 2,000 user-generated experiences on its map by 2024. This milestone builds upon The Sandbox's ecosystem, which includes over 200 creator studios, 130,000 creators, 24,000 LAND owners, and 200 experiences in production.

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With 30% of The Sandbox's five million user accounts based in Asia, co-founders Arthur Madrid and Sebastien Borget picked Hong Kong as the location for the company's first Global Creators Day event.

The co-founders were joined in Hong Kong by Chief Content Officer Nicola Sebastiani and Director of Creators Ecosystem Mathieu Cervety to announce three major launches to empower creators in the platform's ecosystem, focusing on user-generated content (UGC):

1. Opening of The Sandbox: Starting today, 3 November 2023, LAND owners can publish their completed experiences on The Sandbox Map, removing the initial application process for publishing and making it now instantaneous. This update fully opens the metaverse to UGC. This is a pivotal advancement in accelerating user-generated content to unleash the creative potential of game producers on the platform.
2. New Game Maker version (0.9): Before the end of 2023, an update to The Sandbox's free no-code Game Maker will introduce new gameplay mechanics, templates, and social interactions to make content production even easier and offer greater and more engaging functionality to players.
3. New 100M SAND Game Maker Fund: Starting in 2024, the new 100M SAND fund will empower more creators. Its DAO-based selection system will not only reward creation and contents but also the engagement they generate within the platform. This approach incentivizes engaging experiences, and communicates a simple message to creators: "We value experiences. We value the worlds you build, the stories you weave, and the adventures you design."

The Global Creators Day also provided an opportunity for The Sandbox's executive team to reaffirm the platform's vision to provide a new form of entertainment that is more participatory, engaging, and rewarding for users and communities. The endeavor is already well underway with the launch of eight new cultural and geographical neighborhoods on its map in 2023, including Voxel Madness, MegaCity 3, Infinite Pulse, Kverse, Lion City, and other projects.

The platform has now sold over 125,000 LAND parcels, representing 75% of its map, which are held by a diverse community of over 24,000 LAND owners.

"We spent the last two years focused on building our Game Maker and VoxEdit products for creators," said Arthur Madrid, CEO and Co-Founder of The Sandbox. "Web3 puts creators first by enabling a new kind of control, provenance, incentive, and royalty structure. Whether you make music, games, art, fashion, architecture, or any other content, The Sandbox is an easy-to-learn creative platform that allows creators to take advantage of a new system of control, ownership, and revenue for their content."

"Creators have always been the core focus at The Sandbox and this first global Creators Day held in Hong Kong is a chance to bring together our ecosystem as we officially launch UGC self-publishing to all participants," said Sebastien Borget, COO and Co-Founder of The Sandbox.

"We'll celebrate creativity in all its forms on the metaverse, inspiring creators with our roadmap of product updates and insights from key speakers from studios and partners who have already launched experiences on The Sandbox. We'll help creators to interact with our team and with each other, all growing together as their creations define the future of social interactions with avatars and entertainment, music, fashion, sports, gaming, culture, and media."

This push towards a new form of entertainment will accelerate into next year, with the openings of nine new neighborhoods, including the movie-themed Cinerama LAND sale on 9 November 2023, and the addition of over 50 avatar collections launched by creators.

To accelerate this transition to a new form of entertainment, The Sandbox is extending an open invitation to create the best experiences with top IPs and celebrities and earn their place on the coveted IP LANDS. The first IP participating will be Avenged Sevenfold.

The Sandbox is planning more than 30 contests throughout the year to reward the best experiences created around a specific theme. This dynamic synergy between user-generated content and brands sets The Sandbox apart as a unique destination "where gaming meets culture."

This event marks the beginning of a new era powered by UGC and true digital ownership, as The Sandbox accelerates its push to onboard users to the decentralized metaverse. With over five million registered wallets, over 800 global partners, and a 20% year-on-year increase in playtime per user, The Sandbox's vision is to onboard the next billion users into a metaverse ecosystem that can be built by anyone and played by everyone.

With its mobile version launching in 2024, The Sandbox is poised to boost mass adoption for the open metaverse.

Part virtual real estate, part amusement park, The Sandbox fully embraces the idea of the metaverse as a continuous shared digital space where worlds and heroes collide to make magic. Over 400 partners have joined The Sandbox, including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, The Rabbids, Cut the Rope, Gucci Vault, The Walking Dead, Invincible, Snoop Dogg, Adidas, Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, SM Entertainment, The Smurfs, Care Bears, and Atari, all following The Sandbox team's vision of empowering players to create their own experiences using both original and well-known characters and worlds.