Star Atlas 2022: A Year In Review

Star Atlas Starts 2022 With A Bang

Star Atlas began 2022 having just released the game module SCORE, known to players as faction Fleet, and was coming off a complete sell out of their Galactic Asset Offering Phase One. In January, ship buyers saw highs of 130% APR on their ships which drew thousands of players to the Star Atlas ecosystem.

With continued high demand for ships leading into February, Star Atlas launched the second phase of its Galactic Asset Offering, rolling out new models of ships on a roughly bi-weekly basis. Phase 2 expanded the number of available ships by 16 on the market, giving ecosystem participants the opportunity to acquire new ships with their ATLAS rewards from SCORE.

Continuing the hot streak, in March, Automata CEO Michael Wagner spoke at the annual game developer conference in San Francisco, California. The speech, in front of 17,000, highlighted some of the revolutionary endeavors that Star Atlas was undertaking by integrating blockchain technology into Unreal Engine 5 gameplay. The 13-minute speech showcased how Star Atlas development of a virtual economy could revolutionize societal work constructs across the globe.

Star Atlas Holds Several High Profile Community Events

The Star Atlas community became abuzz. April and May of 2022 saw an explosion of Star Atlas guild activity, eventually culminating in the first ever Council of Peace assembly on June 16th. This all-day event showcased a large variety of existing guilds from the Star Atlas community. The pinnacle of the event was a competition of presentations put on by Star Atlas which resulted in three guilds being named the day’s winners. First place overall was awarded to the Guild Coexist while second place went to the guild Dark Matter. Rounding out the top three was The Club guild.

Following the largest community event in Star Atlas history was the first of two 426 Live events. The 426-moniker paying homage to a long-standing community gag, about the timing of new updates…aka 426 weeks. This first 426 event in July saw the release of the POLIS Locker and Star Atlas DAO along with other features including Star Atlas’s player referral system, dubbed star path, alongside a user interface overhaul of the Star Atlas marketplace.

Fast forward a few months to September and the second 426 live event. This time around, key updates featured included the highly anticipated Star Atlas showroom which launched on the EPIC Game Store. This marked the first opportunity for Unreal Engine 5 gameplay involving player owned star ship assets. On the marketplace side, the ATLAS locker was released incentivizing players to lock ATLAS tokens in exchange for marketplace fee discounts and small returns of the governance token POLIS.

FTX Roils Crypto Markets…Including Star Atlas

Despite the economic bear market due to the war in Ukraine and soaring global inflation, Star Atlas looked set for takeoff, reaching a high point at Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon, Portugal. During the conference, Star Atlas was one of the most critically received and highly acclaimed projects in the Solana ecosystem. Once again, CEO Michael Wagner showcased then-upcoming gameplay features of the Unreal Engine 5 showroom such as ship racing, dogfighting, and ship. However, the success of Breakpoint was quickly overshadowed by the catastrophic collapse and bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX. FTX’s insolvency led to a near immediate halt of all fund withdrawals on their platform, of which Star Atlas was affected by, losing nearly half of their liquid cash for continued project development in the FTX lockdown.

Star Atlas Rebounds into 2023

In the week that followed, Michael Wagner gave a conciliatory statement where he publicly acknowledged the severity of impacts that the FTX fallout had on Automata and Star Atlas game development. In the moment, the future looked bleak for Star Atlas. After taking a moment to consolidate and after receiving economic spend data from the community-initiated Community Rescue Survey, the company quickly launched the Start Sequence campaign in efforts to generate new sales while paving the road to the release of their next upcoming module SAGE. New items such as player habitats, mining claims, and titan ships were released. By Dec 31st, the effort resulted in nearly $1.8 million dollars in revenue for the team.

To close out 2022, Automata launched version 2 of the Unreal Engine 5 Showroom alongside a 50-page SAGE game manual. SAGE, the upcoming web browser Star Atlas game, is expected to launch in a test version during the first quarter of 2023, followed by the base of version of the game. SAGE will give Star Atlas players the first opportunity to use their player-owned ships to work together with their factions and conquer territory in game. Actions in Star Atlas will have real life implication as the resources in the game are tied to economic loops centered around the ATLAS token. With SAGE having the potential to dramatically reshape the Star Atlas economy in 2023, Star Atlas citizens have plenty to consider heading into the new year.