Welcome to our weekly roundup where we highlight some of the recent news in blockchain games.
Don’t miss out on any news from the blockchain games space: follow us on Twitter and connect with us on LinkedIn.
June 9th
Does the web3 gaming sector need another game launcher?
- This and more is up for discussion this week in light of game store launcher and aggregator HyperPlay’s recent announcement of $12 million series A funding.
- Is CM Games and Mythical’s Nitro Nation: World Tour car sales, which went live this week, worth being bullish about? At least one of us is.
- Jon has had a great in-depth conversation with Laguna Games’ CEO Aron Beierschmitt about Crypto Unicorns and the recent launch of Unicorn Party, its IP extension including “funnel” games Bumpercorns and Mob Run.
- We mention this week’s interview with The Sandbox COO and co-founder Sebastien Borget, and
- Lastly, do you have to be a full time gamer to enjoy Crypto Unicorns? Check out why it’s our Game of the Week.
Listen to the podcast here.
June 2nd 2023
It seems we’re not the only ones who have had a few days in the sun this week. The whole blockchain games industry is a bit thin on news. Nonetheless, accompanied by a very special celebrity guest, we managed to round up some of the most relevant topics from the week as follows:
- The Big Blockchain Game List’s data on new games added in May and a few reflections on the number of new l2 blockchains emerging.
Three interviews we’ve published this week;
- Neon Machine’s Aaron Nonis about building triple-A shooter Shrapnel,
- Mighty Bear’s Simon Davis on “building a blockchain game fighting for your right not to eat Hawaiian pizza”, and
- Cross The Ages’ CEO Sami Chlagou on building a narrative-driven TCG with deep strategy elements and NFTs. For more on Cross The Ages, check out our Game of the Week.
In closing, we look at some of the new projects we’re hopeful about for 2023 (and 2025).
Listen to the podcast here.
May 26th 2023
- We started off looking at this week’s investments, notably Loot Labs’ $1.5 million pre-seed and BoomLand’s $1 million pre-seed and its exciting milestone of reaching 10,000 Hunters On-Chain players on the testnet.
- We looked at the total of $741 million investments into blockchain games so far in 2023, comparing it to previous year’s very different market conditions. In regards to other investment news, we discuss the reasons why some companies do not disclose exact numbers.
- In launch news we mention SkyVu’s top-down shooter Battle Bears Heroes, which is the first of Sky Mavis’ thirdparty games to launch on the Ronin network. The game has soft launched on Google Play and App Store, which takes us into…
- The ever continuing complicated relationship of web3 mobile games and app stores. Jon shares the process of buying STEPN NFTs using Apple Pay, and why it’s not so straight-sailing. Is Solana’s Saga phone and similar solutions a better way forward for blockchain mobile games?
- Finally, make sure you check out our Game of the Week: GRIT, and don’t miss this week’s prominent interviews with Cronos Lab’s Ken Timsit and Venly’s Stefan Colins on the future of blockchain gaming and Metaking Studios’ David Johansson on building Blocklords.
Listen to the podcast here.
May 19th 2023
- This week we dig into Gala Games and its unexpected move to burn 15 billion Gala tokens to “counter the dump and exit scenario”. How does this actually work, and is it a good strategy?
- Next we look into Sky Mavis’ announcement that Axie Infinity Origins (which is also our Game of the Week) has gone live on Apple App Store in parts of South America and southeast Asia. What does this mean in terms of it being a blockchain game? Has Apple changed its initial rejection of blockchain games and assets on its store?
- Looking closer at a selelction of launches from this week, particularly Aurory’s Prologue to Adventures, and the Sui games launch #1.
- Lastly, we talk briefly about our first Mavens feature that was published this week.
May 12th 2023
- Starting off with sad news this week of US developer Irreverent Labs announcing that the development of MechaFightClub has been paused indefinitely.
- We move on to some better news of a selection of this week’s launches – Gala Games Grit, the community beta of Metaking Studio’s Blocklords as well as Affyn’s announcement of new web3 mobile title Buddy Arena.
- We close by talking about the recent updates and blockchain integration of the games we’re currently enjoying, among them are NFL Rivals, Hunters On-Chain and not to forget our Game of the Week, Blocklords.
Listen to the podcast here.
May 5th 2023
- Sui mainnet has gone live this week, which was followed by the news that 13 games would launch on its network. We take a closer look at the selection of the games, and more.
- We also look at Com2uS’ recent announcement of two new blockchain titles; Ace Fishing: Crew and Minigame Party: Pocket Edition.
- Jon wrote an article about Epic Games Store and its 18 listed blockchain games. This sparks the larger question whether the web2 market is starting to realise and adopt to the inevitable power of web3 gaming.
- Further we take a brief look at this month’s data on the most popular blockchain games and the apparent status quo in the order of current top blockchain games.
- As usual, we close with a highlight of our Game of the Week: Xeno Dragon.
You can listen to the podcast here.
April 28th 2023
This week we talk a lot about
Mythical Games;
- securing an investment of $20 million from Scytale Digital
- migrating to Polkadot
- did its DAO have a say on the move?
- and its launch of American football mobile game NFL Rivals
- Other news we talk about is the launch of Ultra Games, and the different way games and platforms adapt to and launch their products in web3.
- We also highlight Jon’s interview with Alex Paley from Faraway and Lior from Mutant Cartel and their forthcoming city builder Serum City.
- Last we look at Game of the Week: NFL Rivals.
Listen to the podcast here.
April 21st 2023
Among this week’s topics we discuss:
- Two noticable investments; Swedish game developer Goals series A of $20 million and Krafton and Naver Z’s joint investment of $37 million into the Migaloo project.
- We try to make sense of Gala Games’ upcoming airdrop of GALA v2 tokens. What’s the purpose of it? (Hint: we still don’t know…)
- We talk about Merit Circle’s web3 gaming subnet Beam, on Avalanche, as part of a wider context of layer 2 solutions.
- Last of all, we elaborate on why InfiniMerge is our Game of the Week.
Listen to the podcast here.
April 14th 2023
- This week we talk about the launch of Solana’s web3 phone Saga. What more exactly is exciting about its launch? Will this be a ground breaking point where we see other operators adopt to the web3 mobile era and follow suit?
- We elaborate on the Indian blockchain gaming market, in light of the investment announcement of $20 million from game developer Mayhem Studios.
- We also touch on StarkWare’s investment in Unstoppable Games’ space MMO Influence.
- Among other releases we look at the latest games coming to Ultra, Tuesday 25th April.
- Lastly, we look closer at our Game of the Week: Mojo Melee.
Check out the video version here.
April 7th 2023 – (This week’s format is a little different as we are together, in a holiday flat, with the children slightly interrupting in the background. We hope you can still make sense of our conversation about the hottest topics of the week in blockchain gaming…)
- We talk about Ultra’s forthcoming global launch 25th of April.
- Gunzillas announcement of web3 games platform Gunz.
- Some noticeable mints/announcements from the past week.
- As ever, we finished with a look at our Game of the Week, CryptoCrusades, and the reasons why we picked it.
Check out the video here.
March 31st 2023
- This week we covered the Sky Mavis announcement about the first games from external developers launching on its Ronin blockchain, including Directive Game’s The Machines Arena and Bowled.io’s crickets games.
- We talked about Blocklords, among other games, and the slight confusion about what chain the game is actually running.
- Jon interviewed Immutable’s Robbie Ferguson this week. What did he take away from their conversation?
- Arc8 and its biggest updates to-date was on the agenda, as well as some of this weeks game releases and mints.
- As ever, we finished with a look at our game of the week, Blast Royale, and the reasons we picked it.
March 24th 2023
- This week we covered the news about an upcoming web3 game in the EVE Online universe. We also looked at Immutable’s plans to reboot PC game Shardbound.
- We discussed the announcement about Immutable’s zkEVM being powered by Polygon.
- Although not covered on our site, we discussed the SEC warning Coinbase about securities charges and what impact it might indirectly have on the blockchain industry.
- To round off, we explained further why Hunters On-Chain is our Game of the Week.
To hear the full conversation, check out the video.