The gaming landscape is shifting beneath our feet. For years, talented developers faced a harsh trade-off: accept a traditional publishing deal and lose control of your intellectual property, or go it alone and struggle to find an audience. YGG Play and Ruyui Studios just proved that’s a false choice. Their new partnership for the soulslike pixel-art RPG Roots of Embervault marks a meaningful pivot in how Web3 games can grow without sacrificing creative ownership.
A Soulslike Experience Finds Its Footing on Abstract Chain
Roots of Embervault isn’t just another pixel-art title trying to ride a nostalgia wave. Currently live on Abstract Chain, the game masterfully blends the punishing, atmospheric storytelling of the soulslike genre with meticulously crafted retro aesthetics. Led by co-founders Petek and Yan, Ruyui has quietly cultivated something rare in the fast-churn world of crypto gaming: genuine player loyalty.
The numbers tell a compelling story. With 1,500 monthly active users, the game has already generated US$38,000 in revenue. More impressively, it holds a 46% retention rate. That stickiness is the kind of metric that makes publishers sit up and pay attention. It signals that once players enter the world of Embervault, they don’t want to leave.
Why This Deal Is Different: IP Ownership Stays With the Creators
Traditional publishing contracts often come with a silent clause: we’ll fund your growth, but we’ll own what you build. Ruyui’s co-founder Petek addressed this tension directly. “Our ambition is to build Ruyui into one of the most recognizable IPs in the world,” he explained. “But in traditional publishing models, developers are often forced to give up ownership of their IP. YGG Play stood out because they help games scale and reach new audiences while allowing studios like ours to retain ownership of the IP they’re building.”
That distinction is the heart of this announcement. YGG Play isn’t positioning itself as a landlord over creative work. Instead, the publishing arm of Yield Guild Games acts as an accelerator, providing go-to-market strategy, user acquisition support, and community infrastructure without demanding a piece of the foundational IP. For builders who’ve watched friends sign away their universes for a shot at visibility, this model feels like oxygen.
The Casual Degen Sweet Spot
YGG Play has carved out a specific niche it calls “Casual Degen” gaming. These are titles that are lightweight enough to pick up quickly, genuinely fun to play, and built with the crypto-native audience in mind. Roots of Embervault slides perfectly into this category.
The game already weaves social and economic loops into its core design. Players can collect the main character, Bob, via Telegram to use in chats and unlock special in-game loot boxes. There’s a tangible economy at work too, with features like Abstract Runes that let players burn in-game items to earn rewards. This creates an interactive cycle that doesn’t feel bolted on; it feels native to how onchain communities already operate. Players want to participate in the worlds they love, not just passively consume them.
Bringing Embervault to the Asia-Pacific Community
The YGG Play Launchpad goes live with this partnership on Thursday, 14 May 2026, at 8 PM SGT. That timing isn’t random. YGG originated in the APAC region in 2020 and still maintains an active community of over 100,000 players there. Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG, sees a natural fit: “Teams like Ruyui are building exactly the kind of fun and compelling crypto-native experiences our Casual Degen audience wants. Roots of Embervault has a lot of potential as a breakout IP. There’s a big opportunity to bring its story to our community in APAC, where players value games that reward actual skill.”
Through the launchpad, players will engage with quests integrated directly into the game, earning rewards tied to their progression and skill. This approach aligns incentives beautifully. Ruyui gains exposure and a surge of new users; players get meaningful rewards and a reason to dive deeper into the lore. The collaboration also coincides with localization efforts, preparing the game’s story and mechanics for a truly global audience.
What Lies Ahead for Ruyui and YGG Play
Ruyui Studios describes itself as a Web-native animation and gaming studio focused on character-driven storytelling and long-term brand building. That last part, long-term brand building, is what makes the IP retention clause so critical. You don’t pour years into crafting a living universe only to watch someone else steer the ship. With YGG Play handling user acquisition and community scaling, Ruyui can focus on what it does best: expanding the world of Embervault into multiplayer territory while maintaining the depth and charm that hooked its earliest players.
For the broader Web3 gaming space, this deal offers a template. It proves you can structure partnerships that respect creators, reward players, and still hit aggressive growth targets. As Roots of Embervault prepares for its international push, it does so with its soul intact and its IP firmly in the hands of the people who dreamed it up.
ABOUT YGG PLAY
YGG Play is the publishing arm of Yield Guild Games (YGG), supporting the founders and developers of “Casual Degen” games with go-to-market strategy, revenue, monetization, user acquisition, retention, community engagement, and Web3 infrastructure.
YGG Play works with builders to design and launch onchain games that are easy to pick up, fun to play, and built for the crypto-native audience. Through end-to-end publisher support, YGG Play helps promising products become scalable, sustainable titles.
ABOUT ROOTS OF EMBERVAULT
Roots of Embervault is a nostalgic pixel RPG set in the founding age of a living universe. Players fight monsters in real time, collect loot, craft items, and trade on an online player marketplace. Launching as a single-player adventure and expanding into multiplayer, Embervault is designed to be instantly approachable yet endlessly deep.
ABOUT RUYUI STUDIOS
Ruyui Studios is a Web-native animation and gaming studio with a focus on character-driven storytelling, immersive lore, and long-term brand building.
Everything we create is made in-house by our diverse team of young, skilled artists and developers who bring energy, vision, and depth to every story we tell while bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3. With a constant pipeline of original content and strong IP at our core, we’re shaping the future of animated storytelling, one frame at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Roots of Embervault?
Roots of Embervault is a nostalgic pixel RPG set in the founding age of a living universe. Players fight monsters in real time, collect loot, craft items, and trade on an online player marketplace. It currently offers a single-player adventure with plans to expand into multiplayer.
What chain is Roots of Embervault built on?
The game is currently playable on Abstract Chain, a layer-2 network designed for consumer-friendly crypto applications.
What does the YGG Play publishing deal mean for Ruyui?
YGG Play will help Ruyui scale Roots of Embervault through user acquisition, community engagement, and go-to-market strategy, particularly in the APAC region. Crucially, Ruyui retains full ownership of its intellectual property.
What is the Casual Degen gaming category?
Casual Degen refers to lightweight, crypto-native games that are easy to pick up and genuinely fun to play. They prioritize engagement and economic participation over complex DeFi mechanics.
How can players get involved with the YGG Play Launchpad?
Players can participate starting Thursday, 14 May 2026, at 8 PM SGT. The launchpad will feature quests integrated into Roots of Embervault, allowing players to earn rewards for active engagement and skill-based progression.
What are Abstract Runes?
Abstract Runes are an in-game feature that lets players burn items to earn rewards, creating an interactive economic loop within the Embervault ecosystem.
Conclusion
The YGG Play and Ruyui partnership feels like a turning point, not just for the two entities involved but for how we think about value creation in Web3 gaming. For too long, developers faced a grim equation: growth or control. Pick one. This deal demonstrates that with the right publisher, you can have both. Roots of Embervault gets the distribution muscle it needs to reach new markets, especially in APAC. Ruyui keeps its universe. Players get a deeper, more rewarding experience. When the incentives align like that, the game itself stops being a product and becomes what it should be, a shared world that grows because everyone invested in it has a reason to care.
