It's tough to keep tabs on the ever-changing crypto gaming space, thanks to the constant flow of news: everything from big game launches and fun degen experiments to token price swings and occasional project collapses. It's a lot to follow.
Luckily, we're plugged in at Decrypt's GG. We cover the biggest happenings throughout the week, and then this weekly roundup provides a quick way to catch up, as well as find a bunch of other little bits of news from throughout the week.
Top stories
Raini's big pivot: Raini Studios announced that it will shut down its Avalanche-based NFT card game Raini: The Lords of Light on July 21. The competitive card battler, similar to Hearthstone and available on Epic Games Store, will distribute 2 million RST in token rewards (about $3,800 worth) before closing.
Another one bites the dust.
The list of promising and/or once-prominent crypto games shutting down in 2025 just gained another entry, as Raini Studios announced Thursday that it will sunset its Avalanche NFT card-battler Raini: The Lords of Light next month.
According to an X thread, Raini will pay out 2 million in RST token rewards (about $3,340 worth) for June and July ahead of the game's permanent shutdown on July 21.
Similar to Blizzard's popular Hearthstone, along with Web3 games like Gods...
The fantasy-themed game, which incorporated crypto culture references (like Dogecoin and Sam Bankman-Fried) and humor, initially launched NFT cards on Ethereum in 2021 before moving to Avalanche. Despite paying over $1 million in rewards to thousands of players, the studio said that declining player numbers made the game unsustainable to maintain.
Raini Studios will pivot to upcoming action games Lucha Throwdown and Uncaged: The Jon Jones Brawler while implementing a deflationary tokenomics model. The RST token is up 60% over the last week, but remains down nearly 99% from its 2024 peak price.
While crypto gaming has long been seen as a key use for blockchain, letting gamers really own and freely trade their unique items and perhaps profit from a game's success, developers are struggling to sustain their games and digital economies.
Some games, like Gunzilla Games’ Off the Grid, have punched through to a broader audience, gaining adoption from top streamers and gamers alike—albeit ahead of full blockchain integration. But many other games and studios building with tokens are strugglin...
Eve Frontier trial: CCP Games is offering a 10-day free trial (June 27-July 7) for Eve Frontier, an Ethereum-based MMO spinoff of Eve Online. The space survival game allows players to harvest resources, build bases, and earn Grace points convertible to permanent Eve Points that track a player's legacy via a leaderboard.
The trial follows the recent launch of New Era Founders Access, which removed the previous NDA restrictions on early players. The game features cycles (or seasons) where short-term progress resets, but long-term rewards persist. Built on Ethereum's Redstone network, Eve Frontier will use multiple currencies including tradable Eve tokens and in-game-only LUX tokens.
Massively multiplayer online (MMO) Ethereum game Eve Frontier is hosting a new 10-day free trial, letting anyone explore its space survival frontier that “literally wants to kill you,” in the words of CCP Games founder and CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson.
The game will provide free access from June 27 to July 7, allowing users to harvest resources, build bases, and earn Grace, a type of in-game points that is converted to the permanent Eve Points that track a player’s legacy.
The trial launch comes...
CCP Games raised $40 million in 2023 for this blockchain adaptation, and CCP Community Developer Ben Sisson told Decrypt that players of the original, hardcore space sim Eve Online have shown interest in this new twist on the franchise.
“Overall, the response across the board to Eve Frontier leveraging blockchain in the way that we have, especially as it relates to modding and third-party development, has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Sisson. “It is becoming clearer to gamers that this is the technology that allows us to unlock our vision for the game that they want.”
ICYMI
GameStop, the prominent video game retailer that’s building a Bitcoin treasury, generated an additional $450 million in fundraising that it can use to buy BTC, according to a filing with the SEC.
The raise boosts its previous convertible notes offering to $2.7 billion in total after the initial purchaser exercised its option to purchase the additional $450 million in 2030 notes. The offering was previously upsized from $1.75 billion to $2.25 billion.
While plans for the net proceeds do not spe...
Weekend reads
Mythical Games released its blockchain-powered mobile soccer game FIFA Rivals two weeks ago, and we’ve been testing it out to see if this iOS and Android game is worth your time.
Due to the sheer size of the soccer fanbase, Mythical Games told Decrypt that it believes the title could be 20 times larger than NFL Rivals, its most popular crypto game that launched two years ago.
In a nutshell, FIFA Rivals feels like an even more simplified, crypto-infused, and online-playable riff on Score! Hero, a...
It's July, and we're living in a post-Switch 2 and Death Stranding 2 world.
We're in the doldrums of summer for real now, and while the game release calendar is anything but empty, it's not quite so packed with high-profile releases as it is in other parts of the year.
This month brings us Nintendo's second big release for the Nintendo Switch 2 in Donkey Kong Bananza, fresh remakes of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4, as well as Super Mario Party Jamboree, and a bunch of smaller new games worth...
Avalanche massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) MapleStory N has been inundated with bots and hackers since its massive launch in May.
Keith Kim, head of strategy at developer Nexpace—the blockchain arm of gaming giant Nexon—told Decrypt this week that thousands of accounts are being banned every day to maintain the game’s integrity for legitimate players.
Hackers, glitchers, attackers, and exploiters are common in every kind of video game—we’ve lived through the Call of Duty h...
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