This Week in Crypto Games: Sonic SVM TikTok Airdrop on Solana, MLG Meme Coin Soars

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

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present 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

TikTok airdrop: Sonic SVM, a layer-2 gaming chain built on top of Solana, launched its SONIC token on Tuesday. The token peaked at a $443 million market cap but has since fallen to $277 million. With this, players of the project’s TikTok tap-to-earn game Sonic X were able to claim their token allocations—with the claim period ending on January 30.

The game followed the simple tapping premise that most games within the genre follow, but innovated by launching the game via TikTok rather than Telegram. This helped the project reach more than 2 million players, which Sonic SVM said has proven it to be a success. Now, Sonic SVM wishes to onboard third-party projects to follow in its footsteps.

Solana Layer-2 Sonic SVM Launching Token Tuesday With Airdrop for TikTok Gamers

Sonic SVM, a layer-2 gaming chain built on top of Solana, has confirmed that its token generation event will take place on Tuesday. Alongside this, players of its TikTok-based tap-to-earn game will receive airdropped tokens for their in-app progress. Tap-to-earn games rose to popularity in 2024, mostly built on messaging app Telegram with related tokens primarily launching on The Open Network (TON). A huge driver of this attention came from games like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat promising that in...

Call of Duty meme coin: 360noscope420blazeit (MLG) skyrocketed 5,200% over just six days thanks to Call of Duty-themed nostalgia. The Solana meme coin hearkens back to the perceived golden era of Call of Duty—before “omnimovement” and overly complex killstreaks, or the flood of microtransactions and goofy skins. It's not just vibes either: They've launched custom online servers for classic Call of Duty games to draw in a community of crypto gamers.

This approach quickly attracted a cult-like following, but when members of iconic esports team FaZe Clan started shilling the token, it went parabolic. Richard "FaZe Banks" Bengtson believed in the token so much that he even got a tattoo of the original MLG logo—that is, Major League Gaming, an organization that was at the heart of the Call of Duty esports scene.

Call of Duty-Inspired Solana Meme Coin MLG Skyrockets After FaZe Clan Boost

Do you remember rushing home from school to play Call of Duty all night, screaming abuse to your friends on Xbox Live as you worked your way through a bag of Doritos? One Solana meme coin is bringing back those vibes to an apparently eager audience of traders, resulting in the token skyrocketing in value by 5,200% over just six days. 360noscope420blazeit (MLG) started in April simply as a tokenized representation of the prime years of Call of Duty gaming—before “omnimovement” and overly complex...

The MLG token isn't an official offering of that Activision-owned tournament organizer, of course, but that hasn't stopped it from posting monster gains. MLG has peaked at a price of nearly $0.178 as of this writing, putting it at peak market cap of about $177 million on Saturday. It's down almost 30% since then.

The Machines Arena on Steam and PS5: Ethereum hero shooter The Machines Arena—which runs on gaming network Ronin—is coming to new platforms, and will release on leading PC marketplace Steam as well as the PlayStation 5 console. However, due to both platforms having restrictive crypto policies, those versions of the game will have zero or potentially limited crypto features.

On Steam, there will be absolutely no crypto features. However, for the PlayStation 5 release, Directive Games Design Manager David Gracia told Decrypt the company is still in discussions with Sony about how crypto elements could be implemented. This is something to keep an eye on, as we’ve yet to see a game successfully implement live crypto features on PlayStation (Off the Grid, in early access, has a testnest blockchain on the back end but no current player-facing on-chain features).

Ethereum Shooter 'The Machines Arena' Coming to Steam and PS5—Without Crypto Features

Ethereum hero shooter The Machines Arena is coming to new platforms, and will release on leading PC marketplace Steam as well as the PlayStation 5 console. However, due to both platforms having restrictive crypto policies, those versions of the game will have zero or potentially limited crypto features. In its fullest form on PC via the Epic Games Store or direct download, and on Android mobile devices, The Machines Arena runs seasonal play-to-airdrop campaigns where in-game progress leads to pl...

ICYMI

• Telegram game Seed revealed airdrop details ahead of mining phase ending on January 15.
• The makers of Ethereum game Illuvium announced plans to add AI agents to the game as non-playable characters via the Virtuals Protocol.

Ethereum Game 'Illuvium' Reveals AI Agent Plans via Surging Virtuals Protocol

Ethereum game franchise Illuvium is set to leverage the viral AI agent Virtuals Protocol to enhance its non-playable characters, or NPCs. This comes after Virtuals has surged in popularity in recent weeks after it lowered the barrier for AI agent creation, leading to the creation of some of Crypto Twitter’s favorite new characters. The Virtuals Protocol straps AI agents with its proprietary G.A.M.E large language model framework to power AI agents. AiXBT (AIXBT) is the most popular of all its cr...

• Telegram game Trump’s Empire claimed to have surpassed 4 million total players.
• A Pudgy Penguins game is in development by Playember, set to launch on Abstract.
• Transak went live on Ethereum gaming network Ronin with its fiat-to-crypto infrastructure.
• An AI agent called Jaihoz—based on Axie Infinity co-founder Jeff "Jihoz" Zirlin—launched on Ronin thanks to the Virtuals Protocol.
• PIXEL, the token tied to social farming game Pixels, is set to receive staking soon.

• Yuga Labs’ metaverse Otherside is working to get to an “always-on world” state by June.
• The Machines Arena developer Directive Games announced that its new title Civitas will release in 2025.
• Limit Break released "Apptokens" as a new class of digital asset that it believes will power the next-generation of digital game economies.
• BNB Chain action role-playing game Seraph launched its token last week. It's down 72% since then.
• PUBG creator Brendan Greene said his game studio is “not even thinking about” adding NFTs to its next game.

GG spotlight

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

The 5 Biggest Upgrades Expected for the Nintendo Switch 2

When the Nintendo Switch launched eight years ago, it marked a sea change for the games industry. Suddenly, pocket-sized games could come with you wherever you go, along with a console-like interface to play them.  Since then, we've seen the release of the Steam Deck, the Asus ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and many other handheld systems looking to bring that experience to PC gaming.  The Nintendo Switch debuted in early 2017, and even then, the hardware was pretty outdated. The Nvidia Tegra X...

What Is ‘Zoo’? The Telegram Crypto Game With an Upcoming Airdrop

Last year’s wave of Telegram tap-to-earn gaming hype may have died down, but one new title has scrapped the tapping part and is bringing in a ton of users as a result—even if it arguably feels like even less of a game than others. Zoo is the new hit on the messaging platform, bringing a FarmVille-style vibe to the world of Telegram games with a promise of payouts in tokens to players. You build up your zoo, filling it with more and more animals, which all results in earning more in-game currency...

Play With Doge: 9 Games That Feature the Dogecoin Meme Pup

Dogecoin is back in the spotlight, surging to a three-year high price in December amid a broader crypto market spike, not to mention continued promotion from Elon Musk, who will co-lead a government agency called the Department of Government Efficiency—yes, the DOGE. The original meme coin is all about vibes, and if you’re looking to bring more of that goofy fun into your life, then you can find Dogecoin and the meme dog’s likeness in several games. From a Fortnite-like battle royale shooter to...

'Zoo' Tips Guide: How to Earn the Most Tokens Ahead of the Telegram Game Airdrop

Zoo is the buzzy new Telegram game that promises players a share of an upcoming airdrop—simply for jumping in a few times a day and building up their own zoo with as many animals as possible. It’s a slightly different concept to the many tap-to-earn games we have seen over the last year, but just like them, it’s all about maximizing your efficiency to get the biggest airdrop allocation possible. When you first open Zoo, you are met with an empty field and are tasked with turning it into a thrivi...

Edited by Andrew Hayward