Filipino portal capitalizes on online gaming gap

By Patricia B. Mirasol, Multimedia Producer

BRYLLE CESARE J. UYTIEPO, 25, had no intention of monetizing Axies Alerts PH, a project he started in June 2021 to share updates on the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity.

“I am a gamer at heart,” Mr. Uytiepo said in a Zoom interview. “My family was playing Axie [at the height of the pandemic] when we thought: ‘How come no one is updating people on the Axie servers being down?’”

He opened a Facebook page for family and friends to address the information gap, and the page had 500,000 followers in just four months.

The news alert portal drummed up enough attention to get sponsorships from companies like PDAX, a cryptocurrency exchange, after four months in operation.

Web 3.0 startup Yield Guild Games bought a 51% stake in Axies Alerts — now known as YGG Alerts — in January 2022, and the rest of the company a year later.

Yield Guild Games has a market capitalization of $151 million and was ranked No. 257 on the CoinMarketCap website.

Today, YGG Alerts shares news on cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens — digital representations of real-life objects like art — and other related technologies to its more than 1 million followers on social media.

The Philippines was No. 6 in the 2023 Crypto Adoption Report of analysis firm Chainalysis, four spots down from its 2022 ranking.

Mr. Uytiepo said YGG Philippines and Axies Alerts collaborated in 2021 to help in disaster response for Typhoon Odette. He met Luis Buenaventura, country head of YGG Philippines, and said: “Our goals are aligned, so why not just work together?’”

Mr. Uytiepo now serves as the creative lead of YGG Alerts. His Axies Alerts co-founders James Patrick Pebenito and June Philip “Phee” Tejada, have also been absorbed by the organization as account manager and people and business development lead, respectively.

Axies Alerts was initially met with skepticism when it started, said Mr. Uytiepo, an Italian cuisine-trained chef who graduated from culinary school in 2019.

Mr. Uytiepo turned down job offers after graduation so he could open a restaurant, only to shelve his plan and turn to gaming when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

Axie Infinity, which combines entertainment with financial speculation, drew about 2.7 million active daily users at its peak, according to Cryptogambling.tv. Half of the game’s players came from the Philippines.

These gave rise to gaming guilds — communities of players who help one another within and outside a specific game.

“We had to earn the trust of our community,” Mr. Uytiepo told ����ý. “In our space, we have a lot of bad actors and exploiters.”

“We don’t just advertise about cryptocurrencies,” he added. “We take the time to research before we post.”

Technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency can make life easier “but with proper regulations,” Mr. Uytiepo said.

“Having good regulation for this industry is essential,” he said. “I believe in balanced regulation so the space can grow.”