Unlocking KeyChain
KeyChain's departure from beta and shipping into general release.
The Story So Far…
Over the past six months, we’ve seen more and more players and LGS playgroups join the KeyChain beta. What started as a humble effort in April has — through your enthusiasm and support — turned into a growing community joining in our efforts to “supplement and enhance KeyForge organized play”. We couldn’t do it without your willingness to participate and spread the word. Thank you.
Now, the day has come: KeyChain is leveling up and has left beta!
In the beta over the past six months and thanks to your valuable feedback, we’ve:
Added support for more login options
We limited the KeyChain beta to LGS-based playgroups that ran in-person events. We did this on purpose to ensure we had focused feedback with one particular slice of organized play. However, it has always been our intent to expand our scope to encompass more OP. As our scope expands, we feel it’s important KeyChain’s ecosystem also grows accordingly to account for that, and we’re happy to share details about that today.
Playgroup Signup for LGSes and Organizations
Playgroups are the keys on your KeyChain which unlock the doors of organized play. Until now, players could only register their Game Store playgroups, but starting today, they can now register Organization playgroups as well. The latter are organized play groups that are not directly associated with a game store (even if they host events at a game store). These organizations can host either in-person or online events (more on that below!).
This opens up KeyChain to be used by playgroups such as regional event organizers, leagues, and more. Both LGS and Organization playgroups will have the same feature set, but the distinction may allow for better playgroup discovery and filtering in the future.
These sign-ups will be handled through a new Playgroup Application form, which will also be made available on the KeyChain site itself in the near future. This form should be filled out by the primary organizer or leader of the playgroup, or someone who has the permission from that person to do so.
Each submission will undergo a review process to ensure that the playgroup provides publicly visible KeyForge organized play that is by and large accessible to the broader KeyForge community.
For playgroups that are a bit more private in nature, such as a group of friends meeting to play at somebody’s house, it’s our plan to support those playgroups too at a later date. Stay tuned!
Online Play (Event Modes)
We know that a lot of KeyForge OP is conducted online. It’s not just leagues either, as even some game store organizers conduct events online too. We want KeyChain to be able to serve these OP experiences too, so we’re introducing support for online play with the new Event Mode setting.
When playgroup EOs submit an event, they will pick between In-Person or Online as the event mode. EOs can even set a default mode in their playgroup’s settings to make future event submission easier! (How convenient!)
We do want to set expectations a little bit with online play. While KeyChain is here to support all forms of play, it was also built with the goal of supporting in-person play and to help in-person communities grow and thrive. We want to support online play too, but simultaneously wish to do so without compromising the in-person OP ecosystem. With that in mind, online events have the following progression adjustments:
XP earned from Online Tournaments is reduced by approximately 50% (12 XP for attendance, 5 XP for match win, 2 XP for match loss). There is no XP earned for Online Open Play.
Progression towards unlocking awards will be possible through online events, although some specific awards may still be limited to in-person events only.
Stats tracking and RP / leaderboard progression will be supported with online play, with RP contributing towards both the global leaderboard as well as intra-playgroup leaderboards.
UPDATE 10/21: We’ve updated the behavior for award progression (2nd bullet). The text above represents the latest information.
XP & RP Caps
By adding support for more playgroup and events, we expect (and are hoping for!) seeing more KeyForge play reported on KeyChain! Increased volume does however come with a risk of breaking down our progression or leaderboard ecosystems, especially as disparity between play opportunities can begin to become more visible based on people’s personal play environments.
To try to keep things balanced while simultaneously still rewarding increased play, we are instituting two separate systems for XP and RP caps.
For XP:
On a per event basis: earned XP will be capped at 100 XP for all events.
This has already gone into effect.
For RP & Leaderboards:
If a user participates in more than 5 events which contribute RP to the global leaderboards in a month, the top 5 RP-earning events that month will be summed for the month period on the global leaderboard for that user.
Annual and All-Time periods on the global leaderboard will be calculated by adding users’ RP values across the summed monthly periods (top 5 RP events).
Internal playgroup leaderboards will not be affected by this change, and will still sum all RP values for all events held by that playgroup.
This will go into effect at the start of the 2025-2026 season, starting December 2025.
Increased volume of play (more events) still means increased XP, stats, and awards. It still helps for leaderboards too, as it provides you with more opportunities to get a better score for the leaderboard.
Premier Tournaments
As we’ve already shared, Premier Tournament results began populating in KeyChain as of October 6th. These will continue to roll out as events are completed and data is made available. Premier Tournaments:
Use the same XP model as standard Tournaments (25 XP for attendance, 10 XP for match win, 5 XP for match loss — with a 100 XP cap)
Earn progression towards stats and unlocking awards (including some special awards unique to premier events).
Earn RP, but only contribute to the Premier Tournament leaderboards (they do not contribute to the global leaderboards).
Beta-Forged
Just because we’re leaving the beta, doesn’t mean our work here is done. We plan on continuing to add new features and new charm drops to give you even more options. In fact, we just dropped a memento in everyone’s awards shelf, for users who joined KeyChain prior to today’s general release, as a thank you for checking out the beta. Go take a peek!
On behalf of the entire KeyChain team, a sincerest thank you for supporting us in our journey to try to enhance KeyForge organized play. We hope you enjoy this next step in KeyChain’s evolution, and ask that if you enjoy it, that you share the word with your playgroups to have them join in as well. Don’t hesitate to leave us feedback on our Discord server too!
Happy forging!
This is great news, love to see all your hard work coming to fruition!
Look how far you’ve come!