2025 was the year in which the dream formed in late 2020, and became a nightmare in 2024, finally expired.
No-one wants to own — let alone buy — your blockchain game’s token. The play-to-earn cycle is over.
During this period, thousands of projects mixed and remixed the meta in dozens of different formulations but the end result was always the same. While some people will hold your token when the price is going up, no-one wants to touch it when the value is going down.
The proof is the best performing major game token of 2025 was WEMIX, which was down 53%, while RON dropped 92% and PIXEL 95%. All of these tokens also saw their price fall substantially during 2024.
The wider dissonance, however, was that 2025 was a pretty good year for crypto adoption, with assets such as Bitcoin and stablecoins making irreversible inroads into the psyche of Wall Street and Main Street.
Sure, price volatility remains high — mainly for macro, not crypto reasons. But otherwise, adoption of made-up computer money hit an all-time high.
If nothing else, this demonstrates that a combination of patience and actually solving real-world problems — in this case, global demand for dollar-based assets, low transaction fees, 24/7 access etc — eventually pays dividends.
So where does that leave blockchain gaming?
Sore, bruised and struggling to regain trust and relevance, that’s for sure. But more positively, the teams that have a strong idea of:
- what they are doing,
- who they are doing it for,
- and why they are doing it,
now have the time and space to grow and find product-market-fit without anyone asking ‘wen token?’.
- 1:58 2025 was the end of play-to-earn cycle which started in 2021 with Axie Infinity.
- 3:10 However, crypto had a great year in terms of Tradfi adoption; ETFs, stablecoins, DATs etc.
- 7:50 Why have crypto incentives not worked for blockchain games?
- 11:00 Adding real-world value has overwhelmed the other reasons why people play games.
- 14:30 The killer feature of blockchain games shouldn’t be making money but assets having value.
- 17:40 Tokens are dead; at least tokens that are available for trading on centralized exchanges.
- 24:58 Do stablecoins eat all other forms of payment including in games?
- 26:01 Mythical Games is launching a new USDC-based NFT marketplace in 2026.
- 33:03 Funding for games in general and blockchain games in particular has been brutal.
- 36:53 In 2025, blockchain game funding was $350 million, $1 billion in 2024, $1.7 billion in 2023.
- 41:03 Pixels and its forthcoing Stacked rewards app is going for a mass audience.
- 44:44 YGG gave up on mass market guilds and is making Casual Degen games for crypto people.
- 55:06 Another trend is large games like MapleStory and EVE Frontier building ecosystems.
- 1:03:00 The Sandbox is launching its new community memecoin Corners platforms.
- 1:04:45 An example of the sector’s change in 2025 is Mighty Bear Games rebranding to Wearemighty.
- 1:09:25 Immutable also had a significant change of focus from games to marketing in 2025.
- 1:13:15 The products that die in 2026 will be the ones with exactly the same strategy as 2025.
Read all our End of Year features via the EOY 2025 tag.