The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever, with prominent game releases, token airdrops piling up, plus a constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. If you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re bringing you This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Saga airdrop begins: Saga, a layer-1 blockchain focused on gaming, launched its SAGA token last week and began the airdrop claim for over 200,000 unique wallets. Some of those wallets come from its play-to-airdrop campaign across games on Saga, Solana, Avalanche, and beyond, while others get tokens for DeFi staking across Cosmos, Celestia, and elsewhere. Click here for more details.

Game On: The Hottest Upcoming Gaming Token Airdrops on Ethereum, TON, Base and Beyond

Airdrop season is in full swing, with apps, protocols, and other projects seizing upon bear market vibes and regulatory shifts to finally drop their tokens—and potentially reward millions of crypto users in the process. What exactly is an airdrop, though? When it comes to crypto tokens, an airdrop is typically a way for a project to reward its early users and contributors by giving them a share of a newly launched token, all while spreading the tokens far and wide for decentralized governance. W...

Notcoin trading: Viral Telegram game Notcoin is quickly becoming the buzziest thing in crypto gaming ahead of its upcoming token mint on The Open Network (TON), and the hype only grew last week as the project launched pre-market trading. Users with Notcoin balances of at least 10 million can convert them into NFT vouchers and then trade them to speculate on the future value of the on-chain NOT token.

 NFT Revolution

Telegram Game 'Notcoin' Launches Pre-Market Trading Ahead of Airdrop

Notcoin, the viral tap-to-earn game on messaging app Telegram, announced on Thursday the launch of pre-market vouchers—NFTs that live on The Open Network (TON) that will allow high-level players to trade their future NOT tokens before the airdrop has been conducted.  The minimum amount of mined Notcoin required to convert into an NFT voucher is 10 million coins, with the next-sized voucher available at 100 million coins. As such, the vouchers are only available to hardcore players that have amas...

PlayStation NFTs: Will PlayStation embrace NFTs for user-owned assets? Sony is considering it, at least, according to details from a patent application that was recently published. It points to a “super-fungible token” format that bundles up NFTs for in-game assets and makes it possible for users to port them across games—and potentially trade them too. We’ll see whether Sony actually does anything with the concept… but this isn’t its first gaming NFT patent push.

 NFT Revolution

PlayStation Goes Crypto? Sony Seeks Patent for 'Super-Fungible' Gaming Tokens

A recently published patent application from tech behemoth Sony, the maker of PlayStation, detailed the concept of “super-fungible tokens” for games, which would be stored on a distributed ledger and transferable from player to player.  Many gamers have had experiences where they get really into a video game, spend a bunch of money on in-game skins or battle passes, and eventually get tired of the game. When this happens in traditional “Web2” games, players are forced to accept the money spent o...

Prices surge: As Decrypt’s GG reported earlier Sunday, gaming tokens are skyrocketing in value this weekend, with Pixels (PIXEL), Beam (BEAM), and Parallel (PRIME) hitting new all-time high prices while Gala (GALA) and Immutable (IMX) set multi-year peaks. Click here for the full rundown of the biggest gaming gainers right now.

Gaming Tokens Gala, Pixels, and Ronin Skyrocket as Bitcoin Price Hits $70,000

Prominent crypto tokens tied to video games and gaming chains have skyrocketed in value this weekend, with some hitting new all-time high prices and others rising to their highest point in years—all while Bitcoin briefly returned to the $70,000 mark. The Gala ecosystem’s GALA token is the biggest winner in this weekend's gaming and metaverse coin surge, with the price jumping 42% over the last 24 hours alone to nearly $0.08 at present, per data from CoinGecko. It nearly hit $0.085 earlier Sunday...

ICYMI

• Gaming giant Ubisoft is bringing its Watch Dogs gaming franchise to card-battler Cross the Ages via NFT cards that will be sold in April.
• Ubisoft double-dipped on crypto announcements last week, also announcing that it will join the XPLA gaming network as a validator.
• Coinbase and Base—the Ethereum scaling network that it incubated—are giving out free in-game cards and currency for NFT game Parallel.
• Avalanche first-person shooter Shrapnel announced last week that it has revised its token unlock schedule, and about 75% less SHRAP will unlock in April.

• One week after dropping its token, Portal announced that it will host an esports tournament for popular PC game Dota 2 this month, complete with collectibles and loot boxes. No other details have been revealed yet.
• BloodLoop, an Avalanche-based hero shooter akin to Overwatch, launched its play-to-airdrop campaign last week and says it now has 100,000 players signed up.
• Apeiron, a hybrid god game and roguelite on Ronin, will launch a sale for its APRS token beginning March 12. The game’s play-to-airdrop campaign is currently underway.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

 NFT Revolution

Heroes of Mavia Review: Should You Play the Crypto ‘Clash of Clans’ Clone?

I didn’t expect to play nearly this much Heroes of Mavia. With the iOS and Android game quickly racking up millions of downloads and seeing a surging token price last month, I figured I’d start playing around with the crypto-infused game—which takes obvious cues from mobile smash Clash of Clans. As with that game, you’ll gradually build up your base’s defenses, attack other players’ bases, and amass resources over time. But while I’m well familiar with Clash of Clans—and even covered the game’s...

Notcoin: How to Boost Your Earnings Before the Telegram Game's Airdrop

For the past couple of months, over 30 million total people have been playing the viral clicker game Notcoin on Telegram. In the messenger-based game, players click a button to “mine” coins. It’s that simple, but also a lot more engaging than it might sound. Initially, it wasn't clear whether or not Notcoin would launch an actual cryptocurrency—but the team recently confirmed that it will indeed launch a token on The Open Network (TON), targeted for a late March or early April debut. With an air...

You Can Earn Bitcoin By Playing These Free Games

Bitcoin jumped back above $90,000 earlier Tuesday, regaining upward momentum after recent volatility. And earlier this year, BTC set a new record price of nearly $109,000 as President Trump took office. If you’re keen on stacking satoshis however you can, then here’s one way that won’t cost you anything but time: You can earn Bitcoin by playing a bunch of free games. Decrypt’s GG has been covering the rising trend of free-to-play mobile games and apps that offer up small bounties of Bitcoin for...

Here's Every Upcoming Marvel Game You Shouldn't Miss

While superhero movies have been huge at the box office for years, video games have been slow to catch up. Maybe studios don't want to try to measure up to the likes of the Batman Arkham games or Spider-Man games. Maybe they're worried about ending up like Marvel's Avengers, the live-service co-op superhero game that came and went a few years ago. Whatever the reason, we've gone for years without many good superhero games aside from the Marvel's Spider-Man series, which released its latest entry...

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.