Building the Future of Splinterlands: A Message from the CEO
A Message from the CEO: Navigating Market Realities and Our Path Forward
Dear Splinterlands Community,
Splinterlands has achieved something rare in the Web3 gaming landscape: survival, growth, and continuous operation for over eight years. The vast majority of projects launched alongside us have quietly disappeared. We are still here because we have never shied away from meeting challenges head-on and adapting to shifting realities.
Today, we are taking another definitive step in our evolution. We are pioneering a space where no clear winner has yet emerged and no pre-existing roadmap exists. To ensure we are the ones who ultimately define this industry, we must build on a foundation of absolute economic sustainability.
Starting with a Blank Slate
Over nearly a decade, we have built a rich, complex ecosystem together. Every player, collector, and stakeholder has developed a unique vision for what Splinterlands should be—visions shaped by years of whitepapers, town halls, and discord discussions.
While the nature of pioneering in tech means "everything is subject to change," it is easy to lose sight of that reality during day-to-day operations.
The upcoming changes represent an opportunity to establish a blank slate. It is a moment for all of us—the team and the community alike—to reset our expectations, evaluate the project strictly from this point forward, and align on what is required to win.
Our Core Vision Remains Unchanged
As long as I am leading Steem Monsters Corp (SMC) and the SPS DAO continues to entrust us with this project, our foundational mission remains unshakeable:
- Asset Ownership & Fun: To maintain a deep, engaging gaming environment where players genuinely own the assets they buy or earn.
- The Gateway to Web3: To serve as a natural, intuitive gateway to cryptocurrency, using gaming to onboard and educate people globally on DeFi mechanics.
- Diverse Ecosystem Participation: To continue deepening our three core pillars: gameplay (Ranked, Tournaments, Brawls), land management, and DeFi via our liquidity pools.
- Honoring Our Legacy: To support and leverage our massive catalog of six core card editions alongside our evolving ecosystem of collectibles, skins, and audio assets.
We want to appeal to the entire spectrum of gaming and crypto: keeping day-to-day products accessible for casual players, while offering premium products for high-end collectors and investors. My focus is entirely on fulfilling this vision. However, doing so requires us to confront structural realities.
Core Principles for Our Next Phase
To achieve long-term viability, SMC and the community must align on several hard truths:
- Revenue Must Exceed Expenses: First and foremost, Splinterlands must operate with fiscal discipline. Endless debates over tokenomics often miss the foundational rule of business: we must bring in more net revenue than we spend to operate. Failing to do so ultimately devalues the ecosystem as a whole. When survivability is at stake, a project must address its overhead directly and firmly.
- Managing for the Future, Not the Past: We cannot let historical policies dictate future survival. Players and team members naturally view changes through the lens of how it affects them personally. However, failing to correct systemic flaws to protect legacy status quos will eventually lead to collective failure. We must manage the business for where we are going, not where we have been.
- Broadening Our Appeal: We must design our mechanics to welcome new and casual players. In the past, certain systems inadvertently rewarded legacy players and large-scale holders at the structural expense of newcomers. We will be subtly modifying mechanics to create value for the entire system, ensuring a healthy pipeline of new blood into the game.
- Proportional Cost Distribution: Operational and development costs must be balanced fairly across all products and offerings. We cannot subsidize one group at the expense of another.
- Rewarding Long-Term Commitment: Our historical reward structures occasionally incentivized short-term, mercenary behavior. Moving forward, we will be introducing layers of rewards designed specifically to incentivize and protect long-term stakeholders—our "diamond hands." This shift will take time to implement, but it is vital for our stability.
- Grounded Realism: The broader macroeconomic environment is highly volatile. Between shaky crypto markets, global inflationary pressures, and geopolitical instability, the global financial system is facing unprecedented headwinds. We must adjust our expectations to reflect these global realities.
The Opportunity Ahead
Despite these challenges, our competitive advantages are undeniable. Splinterlands remains a leader in crypto gaming. We have a fully built-out product suite capable of enduring market downturns. Most importantly, we have a passionate, battle-tested community. That is an edge money cannot buy, and it will continue to compound in value.
The Web3 gaming space will eventually yield historic winners, and the rewards for those survivors will be massive. I am fully confident that by making the right choices today, Splinterlands will have a legitimate opportunity to be among them.
Appendix: The 2026 Restructuring & SPS DAO Proposal*
(*requires DAO vote and Steemmonsters Corp Board approval)
To align with the principles outlined above, we are announcing a structural reorganization designed to optimize our runway and focus our development.
In 2026, Splinterlands achieved a major milestone by transitioning its IP to the SPS DAO, making it one of the first true player-owned DAOs in existence. To adapt to current market conditions, a new DAO proposal will be submitted to renegotiate the terms of the operational contract between the SPS DAO and Steem Monsters Corp (SMC).
Proposed Contract Amendments
The table below outlines the proposed adjustments to the remaining timeline of the 2 year contract:
| Term | Current Contract | Proposed Amended Contract |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Operational Payments | $5,500 per day | $2,000 per day |
| Incentive Split Threshold | 50/50 split after $4.8M over 2 years | 50/50 split lowered to $1.65M over the total 2 year contract. Payable based on Quarterly Payment Calculation (QPC). Future Pack Sales: 2% of the main edition will be paid to SMC so they can incentivize employee/contractor retention. |
| Development Scope | Broad scope outlined in past proposal | Focused Scope: Core-set delivery, Reward-set delivery, and day-to-day operations management |
This restructuring gives the SPS DAO significantly more financial flexibility to manage its treasury through the market downturn.
Impact on Steem Monsters Corp (SMC)
To operate within this revised budget, SMC will be restructuring its workforce to lean down our operations.
What this means for the roadmap: This reduction in force will inevitably impact the delivery speed of certain non-essential features. The team's laser focus will narrow to delivering the core set, the reward set, and maintaining top-tier day-to-day operations.
That said, because the incentive split threshold has been lowered, it remains entirely in SMC’s financial interest to drive revenue, launch successful products, and beat these baseline deliverables whenever possible.
We appreciate your maturity, passion, and dedication as we navigate this transition and secure the future of the Splinterlands project.
Sincerely,
Dave McCoy
CEO, Steem Monsters Corp
📞Town Hall Note — July 6, 2026: We will be hosting a Town Hall at 10 AM Eastern to go over this topic in more detail. We will also hold another Town Hall today at 8 PM Eastern to give community members on the other side of the world an opportunity to join live and ask questions.
Please see the Discord announcement for the event details and join us for the discussion.
E vamos nós novamente!
Thanks, Dave McCoy, I'm a longtime Splinterlands player. Thanks for this update. We need to see this game continue to develop. One of my gripes about the game is that it's become too complex and complicated. Again, this is just my personal opinion and some people I show it to aren't willing to try it.
it's not only your POV but mine and other players.
I know lot of old players quitting the game because the game now is too complicated, more focus on new set and ignore the old sets.
That is really hurt the long term players who own the cards from the early stage.
I totally agree. It's way too complicated for me these days. I was actually hoping that this announcement would include removing some of that complexity. Particularly with regard the number of different tokens and not just the "monetary" ones. I've very pleased to see a forward looking approach laid out though, rather than acting in reponse to some crisis.
Splinterlands is a pioneer in Hive gamming ecosystem. good luck for new updates.
Why was Splinterlands so successful in 2021? Because the concept was simple and easy to understand.
Get cards. Play the game. Earn new cards by playing.
And there was always the excitement of RNG—you could pull an extremely rare card that might be worth $100, $500, or even more.
Why not return to that formula?
We don't need entries, scrolls, land, potions, and a dozen other systems. They only make the game more confusing, especially for new players. Simplicity is a strength. The easier it is to understand, the easier it is for people to join—and stay.
And honestly, stop worrying so much about the OGs. I'm one myself. Back in 2021, my deck was worth around a quarter of a million dollars, and I'm still holding today.
I've always believed that too much attention has been paid to protecting long-time players. Yes, some level of protection is important, but the future of Splinterlands depends on attracting, exciting, and retaining new players.
Without a steady flow of new players, there is no long-term future—no matter how well the veterans are treated.