Founders’ AMA Summary

6 min readNov 29, 2023

The recent AMA addressed community concerns regarding the Xoil Wars game, and shared the company’s strategy.

This summary covers:

Xoil Wars development
Operational costs
Community sentiment
Epic War
Q&A

Xoil Wars Development

The team highlighted the ambitious journey of building Xoil Wars over the past 2.5 years and acknowledged the rapidly evolving nature of the web3 gaming market had brought on unforeseen challenges, including NFT market volatility, crypto token fluctuations, removal of royalties, and unexpected shifts in player expectations and attitudes towards web3 gaming.

The founders candidly shared the difficulties faced during the development of Xoil Wars, including the impact of the war in Ukraine on their chosen development studio. The decision to stick with the studio despite the challenges led to cost increases, delays, and issues with the game’s code, which brought on the need to recruit a new team. The transition was described as a costly process, with ongoing impacts after the new team was brought on in trying to improve the game’s performance and user experience.

Operational Costs

The Rebel Bots founders shed light on the financial realities of running a web3 startup, dispelling misinformation and noting the founding team has never sold a single token or earned more than a basic salary, and at times not even that. They disclosed that the funds raised were less than speculated, with a large share not in stable coin and being exposed to the bear market crash leading to reductions in available funding.

The team also gave an overview of the high operational costs for the project and the many achievements which had been delivered but overlooked, including providing 24/7 community support, DEX and exchange listing fees of $100K+ each, expensive but necessary services such as market making, audits and service licenses, PR and influencer engagements, and bringing in specialists and dedicated teams to deliver economy models, art and animations for over 400 game assets, website development, and tools such as the native NFT marketplace and card explorer, all of which were large expenditures.

The decision to reduce team headcount and cut costs was also driven by the challenging growth environment, with the overall market size of web3 gamers shrinking significantly over the past year. In addition to this, the founders highlighted the challenging landscape for fundraising for all start-ups, and particularly in web3, but reiterated they would continue working to try and secure new investment to fund operations.

Epic War and Future Strategy

The team explained the strategic move to partner with an indie studio in trying to successfully launch the Epic War title under the Rebel Bots brand, citing a realization that to be successful in the long term, the company needed to demonstrate stable revenue growth, and a growing number of VC investors recommended that a successful web3 game must focus on appealing to and on-boarding web2 players which requires compliance with app store policies. The team set out to evaluate opportunities to launch a revenue generating game as soon as possible to support future development of the company’s vision, and onboard players to web3 games like Xoil Wars over the long term. This type of publishing deal was set to launch a game quickly with very limited costs.

Through this process, the team made a partnership publishing deal with an indie studio, who had a successful web2 game that had been developed over many years and had proven, solid KPIs. This game would be the basis of the new title Rebel Bots: Epic War, and would be altered to integrate the Rebel Bots brand and incorporate web3 features.

Community Response
The Founder’s reiterated they understood many players were frustrated with Xoil Wars, and stressed their shared frustration after pouring immense effort into the project over the past 2.5 years and not seeing the numbers they were hoping for. However, they noted the latest announcement, while perhaps could have been worded better, had led to many toxic responses from the community which had significantly and negatively impacted the mental health of the team. The Founders noted this kind of behavior was unacceptable, and no one had the right to attack, abuse, or threaten other people and this behaviour would not be tolerated.

Q&A

1. Is Xoil Wars being abandoned/will it still be supported?
No, it is not being abandoned. The game had very high costs in the last two years. Like every other studio we are optimizing the team. Renting is now in the works and we will continue doing our best to resolve the issues reported. Just yesterday we’ve solved an issue with MMR being capped, it was reported by players, examined and resolved quickly.

2. Why was the decision made to work on Epic War as well?
We are doing our best to make sure the company, brand and project has an horizon. In order to survive this bear market we need as a company to show revenues, and Epic War has a better chance of doing that. Rebel Bots is still the leading brand of Epic War and we hope we will be able to cross-sell Xoil Wars to Epic War users in time.

3. Why do we think Epic War can succeed?
It is our belief that a game like Epic War has a better chance of succeeding and attracting VCs. Over time the new game will have web3 features which will be compliant with app store policies which means we can use ad monetization and best practice marketing and user acquisition strategies which have worked for the biggest games out there.

4. Will rental still be delivered and when?
Yes — it’s currently being worked on. Our current estimate is approximately around 6 weeks.

5. Why did the team make the announcement?
We believe in being transparent, and while the announcement wording could have been better, we did not want people to start worrying and spreading fear when they saw some of our team including many of our mod team members finish. We wanted to share the news upfront and be clear about our plans going forward.

6. How many people are left on the team?
17 team members

7. Why have no bugs been fixed in Xoil Wars?
That is simply not true, many bugs have been fixed and are fixed, hundreds of players are able to play and enjoy the game. No game has zero bugs. Our support team has been monitoring the feedback from the players and we will do our best to solve these on priority. Only issues which are submitted by players through our ticketing system can be properly prioritized and resolved.

8. Can you describe to us what Epic War is like?
It is a PvP card battle game, similar to Clash Royale, where robots are fighting humans. It requires a bit of skill as you can control a commander who each has their own unique skills and then you can build a deck of cards. You progress through the game by winning battles and gaining medals.

9. Do we plan on doing any marketing campaigns for XWs or EW?
For Xoil wars we have done marketing campaigns in the past 2 years including brand, influencer, sponsored, PPC, direct and organic marketing. For Epic War it is still early as the game is just now entering soft launch and we are slowly running user acquisition campaigns to test it.

Final Comments

We understand some of the players’ frustration, we are continuing to do our best to resolve issues with Xoil Wars and to give the company a future.

Season 1 will be over soon and we expect season 2. We also want to thank all of our community members and those who have been playing Xoil Wars for the past 3 weeks.

Want to Know More?

Use the links below to follow our social media pages and join our community.

You can learn all you need to know about the game on the Rebel Bots website and in our game whitepaper.