Crypto gaming levels up, but tomorrow’s blockchain hits could go stealth mode

Press play… Crypto gaming got an extra life, with investors pouring $988M into the space last month, the largest monthly amount since January 2021. The crypto-friendly VC icon Andreessen Horowitz was behind a big chunk of that spending with a $600M gaming fund that builds on the $1.2B it’s already spent. Major video-game makers including Ubisoft, Take-Two, Konami, and Bandai Namco are developing web3 games in-house, while smaller studios race to build “AAA” titles that appeal to serious gamers.

• High blood pressure: In both the “Call of Duty”-like “Shrapnel” and the Illuvium franchise’s open-world role-playing game “Illuvium Overworld,” players use in-game crypto.

• Cozy game: “Pixels,” a game full of farmland NFTs, said it had 1M+ daily users last month.

• Beyond the controller: So-called move-to-earn games like “Stepn” encourage players to walk to earn crypto (after they’ve purchased digi NFT “sneakers”).

Next level... After Sky Mavis’s “Axie Infinity” game experienced a $600M+ hack in 2022, the next gen of crypto games could go stealth mode to avoid any negative attention. Some experts expect blockchain tech to be integrated into games, without studios calling attention to its presence (aka: less flashy marketing ploy, more backend building blocks). The “Fortnite”-style crypto game “Off the Grid” is debuting on Xbox, PlayStation, and PCs. Coming to consoles could be a big step toward blockchain games’ mainstream-ification.