Blockchain gaming weekly roundup: 30th May

Opinions
By Jon Jordan

Welcome to our weekly roundup where we contextualize the recent news in blockchain games.

30th May

Following a couple of weeks of heady activity, this one was quieter in terms of pure web3 gaming news. That’s not a sign that nothing’s going on, but more of an indication that moves are happening under the surface. After all, blockchain is a technology, and its integrations don’t always make for obvious headline news. 

NFT marketplace OpenSea has dropped its beta label for its OS2 update. Despite competitors, such as Blur and Magic Eden, OpenSea has stood its ground over the years and is now becoming an all-in-all crypto platform enabling token swaps in addition to NFT trades with cross-chain support spanning 19 networks. The company’s recent appointment of its first global gaming ambassador, Kyle ‘Mongraal’ Jackson, is also an encouraging sign of its belief in the future of game NFTs. 

Disney+ has rolled out its new always-on loyalty program. Although it’s not officially saying it’s integrating NFTs, the program now includes access to Dapper Labs’ Disney Pinnacle NFT collectibles. It’s a big deal for Dapper Labs which has been quietly operating Disney Pinnacles on its Flow blockchain for the past 18 months.

Another the-revolution-is-a-slow-train-coming news includes Oncade and its $4 million seed funding announcement. Not a web3 gaming distribution platform per se, Oncade is a newly launched game distribution and marketing platform rolled out in the wake of the unbundling of Apple and Google’s app store walled gardens. 

Enabled by stablecoins, it offers immediate crypto payments, but its stronger selling point is how it hopes to position gaming communities – web2 as well as web3 – as a core element of marketing.

In contrast, fully-fledged web3 community YGG has launched its expanded vision including what it calls “casual degen” game publishing. As for what this means, it will leverage “crypto degen” mechanics in terms of risk and rewards in its casual games, with the first title LOL Land recently rolled out on Abstract.

Nexpace’s Avalanche-based Henesys blockchain has seen onchain activity levels rise steadily following the launch of its MSU marketplace and MMORPG MapleStory N. Hitting 50,000 DAUWs, although this has decreased due to bot prevention measures, it’s surpassed both social RPG Pixels and combined wallet activity on Immutable zkEVM.

Additional news

23rd May

Unfortunately this week has come with more web3 games announcing their final chapter. 

  • First Light Games is discontinuing development of mobile battle royale Blast Royale. Going forward, the game will officially close down on 30th June, but will be open-sourced from 1st June. 
  • Tatsu Works is sunsetting its RPG life sim Tatsumeeko: Lumina Fates, stating that by closing down the game, the team can return to its roots. This means working on its new web2 game Project: Wander.
  • Bright Star Studios announced it’s shutting down Ember Sword with immediate effect as a result of insufficient funding.

Of course, canned web3 games are an inevitable part of the industry. The reason we’re seeing a wave of them closing down now, is because most web3 game funding was raised in 2021 and 2022, so now, or yesterday, is likely to be a time many teams are running out of funding, unless they’re able to raise more.

Keep track of the games officially shutting down or rebooting as web2 experiences in 2025 via our list.

On a brighter note, one studio securing new funding recently is German developer Voya Games, announcing it’s raised $5 million for fully onchain mobile/browser idle resource game Craft World. The round was led by cypto VC 1kx and traditional VC Makers Fund. A strong selling point behind Voya is its CEO Oliver Löffler, a co-founder at mobile idle game developer Kolibri Games, which was acquired by Ubisoft for over $160 million in 2020.

Shoutout to CCP Games and Leah Callon-Butler for the new cap. We love it!

Gunzilla Games’ Off The Grid is expanding beyond Epic Games Store, Xbox series X and PS5, with an expected launch on Steam in June 2025. The Avalanche-based extraction shooter will launch with full cross-play support across all platforms, allowing players to squad up and compete regardless of hardware. There’s not been any mention of its web3 features, but granted Steam still doesn’t allow any such integration, we’d assume it will be a pure web2 version of the game.

Nexon’s MapleStory Universe developer Nexpace attended Avalanche’s London Summit this week, where CBO Dominic Jang shared the team’s wider vision for recently launched MapleStory N and the MSU ecosystem. For while PC MMORPG MapleStory N has hit $1.6 million in NFT trading during its first week – both in-game items and characters – the game itself is not Nexpace’s main focus. Instead, Jang said the measure of success will be the day another ecosystem app is bigger than MapleStory N.

Additional news

16th May

Following on from last week’s main news, Nexon’s PC MMORPG MapleStory N has now launched. Despite overwhelmed servers and some maintenance issues, it seems to have gone fairly smoothly.

While the MapleStory Universe scrolls were still minting last week, it eventually ended in over 1.7 million free NFTs minted in total. As a result, the number of new users on Avalanche shot off, seeing the network hit 6 million wallets, and over 3 million monthly active users.

Alongside game launch, the NXPC token launched via a series of central exchanges too. Since TGE, its price has dropped somewhat from $2.96 to $2.65.

Continuing its gaming roll, Avalanche also saw the addition of Paradise Chain, the blockchain supporting Paradise Tycoon, Paradise Legends, and other future games from Finnish developer Empires Not Vampires.

Another significant developer moving its games to Avalanche is Pixelmon with its mobile RPG Warden’s Ascent being the first to launch.

Well timed then, Avalanche is hosting its Avalanche Summit in London on 20-22 May 2025, where you can catch our editor-at-large Jon Jordan.

Crazy Defense Heroes enables IAPs using TOWER tokens

One of the first web3 games to leverage the scrapped Apple 30% tax is Animoca Brands’ mobile tower defense game Crazy Defense Heroes, which this week announced it’s rolled out payment options including the use of TOWER tokens. These can now be used to buy exclusive IAPs via an app link-out to the game’s webstore. With 540 partner projects in its portfolio and a leading star to many web3 apps and companies, Animoca showing it can be done and work could prove hugely significant to the future of mobile web3 gaming.

Animoca eyeing IPO

So it’s not without substance that Animoca Brands has also unveiled plans to IPO in the US. Indeed, it makes a lot of sense considering the growth Animoca has seen in recent years, the power house it’s become, and the softening of US crypto regulations.

GotW: Blocklords – Battleborne

A long time coming, Blocklords has released its most significant game update yet with the addition of battle mode. This adds strategic depth to the game by letting players set up battle units and go head to head in real-time battles against NPCs. All the important resources grinded throughout a year and a half of farming is finally coming into significant play as these restore and power up the troops.

If there was any doubt, Blocklords is still one of the most ambitious web3 game out there by miles, and it’s still only in open beta. Get grinding – and battling – folks.

All about Wildcard

Perhaps the most ambitious game within the realms of web3, however, is Wildcard from Playful Studios, in development for seven years. Although technically a web2 game, this card collectible action (CCAG) MOBA has the exciting element of Thousands, its web3 streaming platform, which came about due to the developer not finding Twitch sufficient to meet its needs.

Discover all about the web2/web3 Wildcard ecosystem in our recent interview with Playful CEO Paul Bettner and game designer Brad Weir.

Additional news

9th May

Sometimes the news isn’t what’s happening but what’s going to happen, and that’s been the case this week as we prepare for the global launch of Nexon’s PC MMORPG MapleStory N on 15th May.

Technically, you can actually pre-install the 22 GB game ahead of time but the headlines have been made by the free mint of the MSU Scroll NFT via OpenSea. Hitting 300,000 mints within 12 hours, the total is now over 800,000. You have until 12th May to get yours!

Another event happening next week is the collaboration between Sui shooter Xociety and Adidas, which will see 2,500 skin packs being minted with prices ranging from $90 to $130. Each pack will contain various selections of Adidas-branded skins plus gain its holder an allocation of the XO token whenever it goes live. 

AI agents are always in the news and this week GOAT Gaming launched the first version of its AlphaGOAT agents in the shape of Amy, who you can chat to – obvs – as well as attempt to bet in a game on Waifu Clash on Telegram. No doubt more functionality will be added in due course. 

Move-to-earn project Sweat also added an agent called Mia, but its purpose was to help users deal with the previously Near-only app going multichain. Presumably it will also encourage us to do more exercise too at some point. 

Other news included: 

2nd May

Enthusiasm levels are on a high this week as some of the most prominent and anticipated web3 games topped our headlines:

Pixels’ PIXEL staking system has gone live. This highlights Pixels’ bigger play-to-earn vision as it expands into a multi-game ecosystem. As part of this, Pixels will also be the first major game to integrate Apptokens. Ahead of the announcement, editor-at-large Jon Jordan caught up with CEO Luke Barwikowski to get all the alpha.

  • Nexon’s first release within its MapleStory Universe ecosystem, PC MMORPG MapleStory N, will launch on 15th May. One of the most anticipated web3 games over the last two years, MapleStory N is developed by Nexon’s web3 arm Nexpace. It will launch on Avalanche-based L1 Henesys alongside the NXPC token, player-to-player marketplace, and UGC features. 
  • Paul Bettner has unveiled some stats following the initial live streams of Playful Studios’ MOBA Character Collection Action Game Wildcard. More than the impressive stats in themselves, it’s also a strong indication of a very well made web2 game with intentional integration of web3 rewards made possible through its spectator platform Thousands. For those interested in learning more (and you should be) we’ve got an in-depth interview with Bettner going live next week. 

Clickbait-y rumours had it that Pokemon Home was launching NFTs. Although the news wasn’t quite that exciting, Nintendo does appear to be using web3 gaming infrastructure Parasol Technologies in the mobile version of its Pokémon Home app. At least the company includes Parasol in the English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian versions of its updated Privacy Terms.

Hot take of the week: Apptokens can only be a good thing, and perhaps the only thing, saving the currently sinking ship that is web3 game tokens.

Additional news

25th April

After two years of development, Ubisoft and Immutable have unveiled the result of their collaboration. Launching towards the end of 2025, the game is a strategy TCG called Might & Magic Fates, which is based on the Might & Magic universe. 

In terms of web3 features, players will be able to trade their cards, however this is fully optional and adds no competitive advantages.

No doubt, it will be well made, but will the Might & Magic IP in combination with the TCG genre provide a breakthrough for web3 adoption? Nonetheless, it could prove to become the best web3 TCG yet.

In a turn of events, PLAY token entity Ready Maker (Gibraltar) has overturned Ready Games US’ legal case which saw the Supreme Court of Gibraltar freezing 450 million tokens in February 2025. 

Overturning the injunction, the judge pointed out that Ready US had been non-compliant since March 2023 and dissolved as a company in March 2024. It also noted that the initial freezing order had resulted in a sharp fall in the PLAY token price. A further hearing on 25th April 2025 will determine the indemnity costs payable to PLAY. Stay tuned, as they say. 

Further to our recent discussions about Apptokens, Pixels has announced it will be the first major game to integrate Limit Break’s protocol. As part of major changes coming to Pixels, CEO Luke Barwikowski announced the creation of the vPIXEL token, which will be a token that can only be spent or staked. Backed 1:1 against PIXEL, players will however be able to withdraw vPIXEL without any fees, using it in partnered games such as Forgotten Runiverse.

With a previous statement that its FIFA-licensed mobile football game FIFA Rivals would launch “in summer 2025”, it’s now confirmed that the game is aiming for a 14th June launch, alongside FIFA kicking off its Club World Cup. Prior to its global launch, the game is set for pre-release in specific regions in May.

With Jurassic World being the highlighted experience for its current Alpha Season 5, The Sandbox keeps rolling out new experiences regularly, one particularly enjoyable based around The British Museum.

In other major The Sandbox news this week, the platform has signed a multi-year deal with Bruce Lee Enterprises. Initially, there will be a Bruce Lee hub making its way into The Sandbox, with the later addition of a solo experience called Tao of the Dragon.

On 3rd-4th June, Pocket Gamer Connects is making its debut in Spain’s main tech hub and economic centre Barcelona. Do you want to be a speaker?

Additional news

18th April

It may be the Easter holidays but blockchain gaming news waits for no-thing, especially in a week in which Immutable’s year-long Perpetual Rewards – previously called The Main Quest – finally dropped its first rewards.

In total, around $230,000 of IMX tokens were given away, with the top wallet getting $8,467-worth of IMX. That stated, the prize pool for the coming week is down to around $90,000. Over time, other assets including game NFTs will also be added into the mix.

Of course, the point of the exercise is to encourage people to play as many Immutable games as possible and for as long as possible. Although each reward key costs 500 gems, the more you play the rarer your key, and the rarer the key, the better the rewards.

Other news this week included Shrapnel revealing more details about its Chinese expansion. All players will play within the same game world, but Chinese gamers will have their own separate NFT marketplace, although it’s expected that assets will be transferable between marketplaces.

Another interesting snippet is that console shooter Off The Grid reportedly generated more than $1 million in revenue last month. That’s not much considering it’s raised over $100 million but at least it’s a start. If nothing else, the game is still in early access and running on the Gunz’s testnet.

Jon Jordan 783 posts 2 comments

Data fiend and editor-at-large Jon Jordan has been writing/speaking about the games industry since 1999. He predicts blockchain is the next great disruption and was the launch editor of BlockchainGamer.biz. Jon is a games industry veteran: ex-Edge, Develop, Gamasutra, Seeking Alpha, PocketGamer.biz. You can contact him via [email protected]

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