XP Network is a rewards and event platform that connects people through the games, events, stores, and experiences they love… both online and in person.
Whether you're hosting a tournament, selling products, running a convention, or launching a campaign, XP Network rewards user participation with XP (Experience Points) that can be redeemed across our partner ecosystem.
Get involved at the ground level of a platform poised to power the future of engagement, loyalty, and rewards. XP Network gives you the tools to deepen connections with your audience and community.
Backed by leaders from Apple, Twitch, Plaid, and the esports and tabletop industries, XP Network is designed to scale quickly and empower players, publishers, retailers, and organizers alike.
My name is Jason Hawronsky, CEO and Co-Founder of XP Network. I started my gaming career back in 1998, when I opened a retail account as an official Games Workshop stockist for Warhammer. I was 13 at the time and had just moved to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area from Lubbock, Texas. My new 7th-grade friends had never heard of Warhammer, and as a good little gamer, I got everyone I knew into the game. The only hobby shop close to us was in Denton, a 30-minute drive each way, called “Big World Comics.” After months of packing my mom’s car full of teenage boys, weekend after weekend, I convinced her that it would be a good idea to just order the product directly from Games Workshop. So she filed for an EIN, and I negotiated with GW to lower the minimum stock purchase down from $10,000 to $5,000 (a fortune for a 13-year-old in both cases). My mom was super supportive, and her new Dallas job actually paid well enough to consider this crazy idea. I can remember her saying, “Well, maybe you’ll learn taxes or something.” I would find out later that what I talked my mom into ended up being a very long and successful career path in publishing, tech, and gaming that’s now spanned over 25 years.… and I learned taxes.
Jasco Games started with Warhammer, then Yu-Gi-Oh!, then Anime, all sold out of my mom’s guest room. I reinvested every penny back into the store, growing it large enough to move into our game room (about 4x the size of the guest room), and in 2002, I opened a full-blown 3,000 square foot retail hobby shop in partnership with my dad, including a LAN center and arcade games.
In 2006, we moved back to Lubbock, Texas, and I reopened Jasco Games, by myself this time, while attending Texas Tech University (Guns Up!). In 2009, Steve Horvath and John Grams, President and Vice President of Fantasy Flight Games, started negotiations with me to purchase UFS, “The Universal Fighting System,” a trading card game that I grew to love and really supported at my store. Fantasy Flight Games cancelled all of their TCG lines in 2009, and I took up the challenge of reviving a “dead” TCG. In January 2010, I took out my final student loan to pay for UFS and all of the remaining inventory and began my publishing career.
I successfully published UFS (Now UniVersus) and dozens of other games like Street Fighter: The Miniatures Game, Mega Man The Board Game, The Buffy The Vampire Slayer Board Game, Evil Dead II (another game resurrection story), Top Gun Plot Twist Party Game, and many, many more. Through it all, I saw the same problems over and over again: disconnected fanbases, outdated event tools, publishers with no way to reward loyalty with accountability, and communities without a centralized home.
The story of XP Network really begins in 2015. I met Nick Fotheringham and JT Gleason, two of our Co-Founders, at Lvl Up Expo in Las Vegas. JT walked by our Jasco Games UFS $1,000 tournament, live streaming on Twitch, and said, “Hey, what’s your stream called?” I said, “UFS $1K, why do you ask?” He said… “You’re on the front page of Twitch. You have 200,000+ concurrent viewers.”
This is when I learned who Nick and JT were.
JT - Founding CTO of Justin.tv and Twitch, led global publisher integrations post-Amazon acquisition.
Nick - Built the backbone of modern esports, from Halo and EVO to FIFA and major arena shows.
A few weeks later, Nick, JT, and I signed papers and officially partnered. “We’re going to build a platform that gamifies the entire world.” We would solve my game publisher problems, drive retail, support organized play, give rewards, still make games, and give the players a way to earn real-life rewards for doing what they love.
Then, in 2020, the Pandemic hit the world. We paused all of our dreams for a few years, and I sold Jasco Games in December of 2021. In 2022, I called Nick. “Nick… what are you doing right now? I want to reassemble the band.” Nick said, “I’m talking to my turtle in my back yard... I’m in. Let’s call JT. Do you think he carved out XP Network from his non-compete?” Merged call - “JT, it’s Jason and Nick. Did you happen to carve out XP Network from your non-compete when you left Twitch?” JT replied, “Of course…”
So in 2022, the band reassembled. This brings us to our final Founder and another phone call. Nick - “Chase, what would it take to bring you on the team? We want you as CTO of XP Network.” Chase said, “I get to hang out and work with my friends?... Yeah, I’m in!”
We welcomed Chase Farmer, our CTO, who launched Apple Music and led engineering at Plaid, the company powering the financial infrastructure behind Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase.
We’ve been building for you ever since. This is a true passion project. Something gamers and fun-seekers have needed for decades.
This is XP Network, my friends, and we’ll never stop building for you.
Our mission…
“To bring peace and entertainment to the universe”
Let’s gamify the world together.
- Jason Hawronsky
