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Inventory of Web3 games that have secured large financing during the bear market and their progress.

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What has happened to the projects that raised large amounts of funding in the previous cycle?

Original Title: "GameFi Summer is Coming? A Review of Web3 Games and Progress That Have Achieved Large-Scale Financing in the Bear Market"

Original Source: flowie, ChainCatcher

GameFi, which has been silent for a long time, has recently entered a period of concentrated growth, and the crypto community has also begun to call for GameFi Summer. In addition to still having high hopes for GameFi to accelerate the large-scale adoption of crypto, crypto users also believe that in the upcoming year of 2024, as the sector with the most financing in the entire Web3 primary market in the previous cycle, GameFi must hand over its report card to investors.

According to the data provided by Immutable on the X platform, Web3 gaming financing will account for 62% of the total financing in the Web3 industry in 2022. DappRadar data shows that in the three quarters of 2023, the blockchain gaming sector attracted investments of 739 million, 973 million, and 600 million US dollars respectively. This means that even in the crypto winter, after the collapse of the chain game in 2021, capital has always been heavily invested in the Web3 gaming industry.

Despite high expectations for GameFi, many cryptocurrency users are skeptical of the GameFi Summer hype. According to Coingecko, out of the 2817 web3 games launched in the GameFi market over the past 5 years, approximately 75.5% (2127 games) have failed. In other words, 3 out of every 4 web3 games are inactive.

Some cryptocurrency users have expressed that, in addition to the high failure rate and even rug pulls, GameFi seems to have less potential for disrupting traditional gaming compared to DeFi's revolution in certain aspects of traditional finance. Following the concept of play-to-earn, while there are many new concepts in GameFi, most of them are more hype than substance.

GameFi or Web3 games have always been a hot topic in the primary market. After a period of silence for nearly two years, the recent hype - is it real or just hype? What about the projects that raised large amounts of funding in the last cycle?

Why is everyone talking about GameFi Summer?

Since mid-October, there has been a surge of activity in the GameFi sector. On one hand, many new and old projects have started to take action frequently, and token prices have risen sharply. In mid-October, for example, the 3A blockchain game BIGTIME went online on OKX and its price increased nearly 20 times in just two days, bringing some attention back to GameFi from crypto users.

Subsequently, some new and old chain game projects also began to make frequent efforts. At the end of October, the RPG masterpiece Illuvium announced that it will conduct public testing in the first quarter of 2024, and then announced that it will be listed on the Epic Games Store and reached a cooperation with the esports club Team Liquid. All income within the ecosystem will be 100% returned to ILV stakers. Its native token ILV has risen from $49 to $109 within a month, an increase of over 123%.

Web3 gaming platform Immutable has announced a partnership with gaming giant Ubisoft. The native token price of Immutable has risen from $0.6 to $1.12 within a week, with an increase of over 80% in 7 days. According to L2BEAT data, the TVL of Immutable X also exceeded $200 million last week, with a 7-day increase of 40.71% (currently falling to $182 million). At the same time, the entry of traditional gaming giants like Ubisoft has brought more possibilities for playable blockchain games.

Former blockchain gaming platform Gala Games announced a strategic partnership with DWF Labs in early November to accelerate the adoption of L1. Its token, Gala, has risen by over 30% in the past month.

Recently, there have been many major developments in the P2E industry, including the previous P2E leader projects Axie and STEPN. Sky Mavis, the parent company of Axie Infinity, has created the Ronin game sidechain. With the migration of P2E MMO games Pixels and Zoids Wild Arena, Ronin has attracted a large number of new users. Ronin's data shows explosive growth, with the number of active user addresses in early November increasing sixfold compared to the previous month. Axie has partnered with the Philippine ride-hailing software Grab to provide additional benefits to local users. The AXS token price has risen 20% in one month.

STEPN development team also announced the launch of its second game, Gas Hero, in November, and officially started community testing on November 27. Star Atlas, a former star chain game on the Solana chain, combines new game modes with elements such as cryptocurrency and NFTs to bring players a brand new gaming experience. The ATLAS token has seen a monthly increase of 132%.

Last year, TreasureDAO, which created the phenomenal game The Beacon, recently announced plans to develop its own gaming blockchain and stated that it will use MAGIC as the Gas token.

With the concentration of tokens in the blockchain gaming sector, the total market value of blockchain gaming has increased by over 10% in the past week, reaching a current total market value of nearly $1.5 billion. From the perspective of primary market investment and financing, according to RootData, GameFi sector investment rebounded in October, with financing amount exceeding $100 million, up 61% from September's $67 million, while financing amounts in July and August were less than $15 million. In addition to Animoca Brands receiving a $50 million investment from NEOM, a fund led by the Saudi Crown Prince, Shrapnel, known as the blockchain gaming version of CS, received $20 million in Series A financing. In November, the metaverse game MATR1X received $10 million in Series A2 financing, with participation from Folius Ventures, SevenX Ventures, and ABCDE Capital.

Aside from some actual actions in the gaming sector, the high demand from cryptocurrency users for this Gamefi Summer wave has a basic logic: in the previous cycle, Gamefi primary market invested too much money, with many projects raising millions of dollars, but ultimately achieving little. As the cryptocurrency market gradually shifts from bear to bull, with a large number of games entering public beta in Q1 and Q2 of 2024, Gamefi's secondary market is bound to perform better, providing some explanation to investors.

"P2E" Afterward, blockchain games are divided into Web2.5 games and full-chain games

After the "collapse wave" of Gamefi at the end of 2021, the cryptocurrency market gradually entered a deep bear market, and Gamefi also gradually fell silent. There were almost no paradigm innovations like Axie and Stepn in play-to-earn, but there were also some small ripples, such as the Free to Own model based on NFTs, 3A RPG games with more emphasis on playability, and Bet to Earn/Skill to Earn with a certain degree of gambling and competitive nature.

For example, in August last year, the blockchain game Limit Break announced the completion of a $200 million financing led by Paradigm and proposed a new model of "Free to Own". Although this model was questioned, Zhao Changpeng, CEO of Binance, mocked in a tweet: "Venture capital firms (VC) have just created a new term: Free-to-own. If everything in the world is free, why do we work so hard... It won't be free forever. Work hard!" However, the NFT series DigiDaigaku released by Limit Break at that time once ranked first in trading volume on OpenSea within 24 hours, and the floor price peaked at around 18 ETH.

After the short-lived popularity of Limit Break and DigiDaigaku, The Beacon, a game incubated by TreasureDAO, also became one of the hottest blockchain games in this bear market. Within a week, more than 10,000 players entered The Beacon, and over 17,000 "founder game characters" were sold at a price of $40. Many YouTubers also live-streamed the gameplay. The reason for The Beacon's popularity is largely due to its demo, which has added a lot of playability. Its "dungeon" challenge sets new content every day, allowing users to enjoy the fun of playing games in addition to getting airdrops.

And in October this year, BigTime, a 3A blockchain game, also became popular due to the astonishing rise of its game token BIGTIME, with even invitation codes for the preseason appearing on second-hand e-commerce platform Xianyu.

Overall, after the collapse of the chain game at the end of 2021, the chain game is trying to get rid of the simple "Play to earn" label and transform into a Play and earn mode by increasing playability to cultivate a group of real game players. In 2022, there were many so-called 3A-level chain games such as Bigtime, Delysium, and Abyss World. In 2023, the narrative direction shifted to full-chain games, and projects such as Dark Forest, Loot, and Arena of Faith dedicated to becoming full-chain games emerged. Many encrypted VCs, including Paradigm, have expressed optimism about the development of full-chain games.

EMC_Labs researcher @0xNing0x mentioned in summarizing the fundamentals of Web3 games this year that the industry has gradually divided Web3 games into Web2.5 games and full-chain games. ABCDE Capital also divided current Web3 games into Web2.5 games and full-chain games in their article "Why We Invest in Matr1x?"

@0xNing0x explained that Web2.5 games refer to "traditional" chain games that put game assets on the chain, place game core logic off the chain, and do not have game community governance mechanisms. However, ABCDE believes that Web2.5 games emphasize Play & Earn, weaken the Earn component, and increase the proportion of Play. On the other hand, fully on-chain games are easier to understand, as @0xNing0x pointed out, referring to a new type of chain game that puts game assets and game core logic on the chain and has a DAO governance mechanism. ABCDE believes that this narrative is more grand and more native to blockchain, but it is still in its early stages, similar to DeFi in 2018, and still needs a few years to iterate and develop.

However, despite the emergence of new narratives and wealth-generating projects in the blockchain gaming industry, and the recent frequent actions of blockchain gaming projects with good token price increases, there are still doubts about whether blockchain gaming will have a good performance in the next bull market. Founder of dForce, @mindaoyang, mentioned that "the entire blockchain gaming industry is still far from achieving the kind of transparency that DeFi's Uniswap has brought, except for a change in wording." Blockchain gaming still faces three contradictions: the conflict between playability and financial attributes; the conflict between the coinage rights of developers and the decentralization of token models; and the unequal status between players and developers, with many players and few good developers.

From the current perspective of blockchain gaming projects, there isn't much paradigm innovation in terms of gameplay and economic models, and it's still difficult to break away from the cycle of violent ups and downs leading to death.

那些融了大钱的 Web3 游戏进展如何？

Translation:

How are the Web3 games that have raised a lot of money progressing?

Despite the relative quietness of the Web3 gaming industry during this bear market, financing in this field has always occupied an important position in the Web3 industry's investment and financing. ChainCatcher has compiled a list of representative projects that have received significant financing (over $10 million) from well-known capital sources since January 2022, along with their recent developments.

Animoca Brands

The main recipient of over a billion dollars in financing is Animoca Brands, which has raised nearly $600 million in financing from 2022 to the present. Recently, Animoca Brands has entered into a strategic partnership with TON, strategically investing in the TON ecosystem and becoming the largest validator of the TON blockchain. The TON Play game infrastructure project based on TON provides the infrastructure and solutions needed to launch new game projects on TON, allowing Animoca Brands' portfolio of over 400 Web3 projects to be smoothly ported directly to Telegram.

Proof of Play

Proof of Play is a Web3 game studio. It completed a $33 million financing led by Greenoaks Capital and a16z Crypto in September this year. Proof of Play has currently launched its first game, "Pirate Nation". In "Pirate Nation", players can collect and dispatch pirates for adventures, collect crafting materials, treasures, and pirate gold. Pirates can gain experience and level up through multiple adventures.

Mythical Games

Mythical Games is a game technology studio aimed at creating world-class products and promoting consumer adoption of distributed ledger technology through gaming. In June of this year, Mythical Games raised $37 million in Series C1 funding led by Scytale Ventures, with participation from Animoca Brands, PROOF, MoonPay, and a16z Crypto. Recently, Mythical Games launched the blockchain-based video game NFL Rivals on Apple and Android devices, and released another mobile game called "Nitro Nation World Tour".

CCP Games

CCP Games received a $40 million investment led by a16z Crypto in March this year. CCP Games is an Icelandic game development company founded in 1997, known for its modern sci-fi space MMO game "EVE Online". After this financing, CCP Games plans to use it to create a new 3A blockchain game based on the universe of Eve Online.

Gunzilla Games

Gunzilla Games is a game developer that is currently developing "Off The Grid" (OTG), a cyberpunk battle royale 2.0 game. In June of last year, Gunzilla Games completed a $46 million financing round with Republic Capital leading and Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, and others participating.

Wildcard

Wildcard is a Web3-based electronic game for gamers, fans, and collectors. In June of last year, Wildcard completed a $46 million financing led by Paradigm. In April of this year, Wildcard launched 4,444 Wildpasses on Magic Eden's Launchpad, which is the first digital asset released by Wildcard. This digital asset will provide a unique opportunity to access the Wildcard Universe.

Irreverent Labs

Last May, Irreverent Labs received a $40 million Series A funding with participation from a16z Crypto, Solana Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, and others. Irreverent Labs, led by Rahul Sood, a veteran in the esports industry and founder of gaming platform Unikrn, is launching its first NFT game "MechaFightClub" which features battling roosters.

Jadu

Jadu is a Web3 augmented reality platform that is creating a world-class AR game where players will use Jetpacks and Hoverboards to travel to real-world locations and search for rare NFTs in the game. In April of last year, Jadu completed a $36 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto. In February of this year, Jadu announced that users can register and use the platform, and according to its official website, Jadu can be downloaded on the App Store and Google Play.

Matr1x

Matr1x is a metaverse brand that plans to build the Matr1x brand through self-developed high-quality games or cooperation with third parties, game IP development cooperation, global esports events, etc. Matr1x will use three large games with a unified worldview, Matr1x FIRE (first-person shooter game), Matr1x WAR (shooter + MMORPG), and Matr1x EVOLUTION (SOC), to interpret its game trilogy (cyber earth - Mars immigration - interstellar exploration). Matr1x recently announced that it has raised $10 million in funding from Folius Ventures, SevenX, ABCDE, and other investors. In August of this year, Matr1x FIRE launched its Alpha test and airdropped tens of millions of FIRE tokens to test users.

After the financing announcement, the NFT series of MATR1X - MATR1X 2061 floor price once rose to 2.65 ETH. MATR1X is also launching another platform-level NFT, MATR1X KUKU, which enjoys the creator economic benefits of MATR1X and the advanced rights of the MATR1X platform.

SHRAPNEL（SHRAP）

Shrapnel is a competitive multiplayer FPS game developed by a team of top AAA game and blockchain project experts in the industry. Last year, it raised $7 million through token sales, with participation from Dragonfly and Three Arrows Capital. Recently, its development game studio, Neon Machine, also raised $20 million. "Shrapnel" is scheduled to be launched for paid users in December and will be released as a free game in 2024.

On November 8th, the game was launched on Bitget at a price of 0.03 USD and later soared to 0.19 USD, an increase of over 533%. However, with larger financing amounts, internal issues have arisen within Shrapnel. Neon Machine has mentioned lawsuits to multiple investors, claiming an attempt to seize control and funds of the company.

Pahdo Labs

Pahdo Labs is developing Halcyon Zero, an isometric action role-playing game set in a ethereal world with an anime-style aesthetic. Pahdo Labs' mission is to cultivate a virtual world built by players. The upcoming game will allow players to create their own anime-style world using AI or program-generated enhanced tools, bringing creativity and social features to the forefront of anime role-playing games. In September of this year, Pahdo Labs completed a $15 million Series A funding round led by a16z Crypto.

Mahjong Meta

Mahjong Meta is a Web3 mahjong competitive community created by former Tencent and NetEase employees. In August of this year, Mahjong Meta completed a $12 million financing led by Dragonfly and Folius Ventures. Currently, users can log in to the official website to play games and participate in the Mahjong Masters tournament.

Illuvium（ILV）

Illuvium is an open-world RPG adventure game based on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing players to collect, trade, and battle NFT assets. In May of this year, Illuvium announced the completion of a $10 million financing round led by Framework Ventures.

Recently, Illuvium announced that it will conduct public testing in the first quarter of 2024. It also announced that it will be listed on the Epic Games Store and has reached a partnership with the esports club Team Liquid. All revenue within the ecosystem will be 100% returned to ILV stakers.

Azra Games

Azra Games is a blockchain gaming company that aims to create a mainstream collectible combat RPG. In February of this year, Azra Games completed a $10 million seed round of funding, led by a16z, with participation from NFX, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures, and Franklin Templeton. Azra plans to release the first installment of its game Legions & Legends later this year.

Angelic / Metaverse Game Studios

Metaverse Game Studios is a blockchain game development studio. Its game, Angelic, is a dark science fiction narrative strategy role-playing game. In March of last year, Angelic / Metaverse Game Studios completed a $10 million financing round led by Animoca Brands and Solana Ventures.

除了以上近一两年获得大额融资的 Web3 游戏项目外，前文提到的 Star Atlas、Ronin Network、Treasure DAO，包括 STEPN 开发团队推出的新游戏 Gas Hero 等也值得重点关注。

Translation:

In addition to the Web3 gaming projects that have received large financing in the past year or two mentioned above, Star Atlas, Ronin Network, Treasure DAO, and the new game Gas Hero developed by the STEPN team mentioned earlier are also worth paying close attention to.