Crypto Gaming Attracted $600M Worth of Q3 Investment Despite Bear Market
The nascent blockchain gaming trade continues to be seeing substantial enterprise capital funding regardless of continued challenges within the broader crypto and gaming markets. Blockchain video games obtained roughly $600 million in Q3 2023, in accordance with a report launched by crypto knowledge agency DappRadar.
That mark is down 38% from the $973 million price of crypto gaming funding that DappRadar tracked in Q2 2023. It places the tally at roughly $2.3 billion in funding to this point this 12 months. Whereas 2023 isn’t over but, this $2.3 billion in funds to this point is a mere 30% of what was raised throughout all of final 12 months.
This 12 months has been powerful for sport studios each in and outdoors of crypto. GamesIndustry.biz reported that over 6,100 jobs have been eradicated throughout the complete gaming trade prior to now 12 months. Corporations like Epic Video games, Telltale Video games, and Team17 have laid off employees throughout the previous month—and gaming-focused crypto firms like Star Atlas studio ATMTA and Otherside developer Yuga Labs have additionally laid off employees this 12 months.
DappRadar discovered that almost all of crypto gaming funding this previous quarter was pushed towards gaming-centric funding corporations. This implies that VCs and their varied accelerators and funds will proceed to be a main supply of startup capital for fledgling blockchain sport studios.
Between July and the tip of September this 12 months, $262 million was allotted to funding corporations within the area, whereas $213 million was put towards sport and metaverse initiatives immediately. Notably, an additional $125 million was funneled into blockchain gaming infrastructure, per the report.
Axie Infinity—which noticed roughly half 1,000,000 distinctive lively wallets in late 2021 earlier than experiencing a $622 million hack in early 2022—was the title with the best quantity of NFT transaction quantity throughout this previous quarter. Axie noticed $90 million in complete quantity over the three-month interval, in accordance with DappRadar. NFT buying and selling card sport Gods Unchained took the second spot, tallying $55 million in transaction quantity in Q3.
Axie Infinity’s ongoing dominance within the blockchain gaming sector is partly as a result of a lot of the highly-anticipated NFT video games in growth are simply that—nonetheless in growth. Titles like Parallel, Shrapnel, Deadrop, and MapleStory Universe, for instance, haven’t but been absolutely launched.
However the Sky Mavis workforce behind Axie has additionally made its personal efforts to maintain the sport’s group engaged, regardless that the play-to-earn sport’s speedy hype cycle—surging in 2021 with billions of {dollars}’ price of NFT trades, earlier than its financial system cratered in early 2022—certainly impacted Axie’s participant base.
“The scene may be very a lot vibrant,” Sky Mavis co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin stated of Axie’s esports scene in a current interview with Decrypt.
Zirlin shared that Sky Mavis is giving out 112,000 AXS tokens (roughly $472,000) to gamers each season, which lasts about six weeks. The sport nonetheless has weekly tournaments as nicely.
Whereas Zirlin sees a “consolidation” taking place within the Web3 guild area—crypto gaming’s model of esports workforce organizations—the bear market presents its personal upsides.
“Bear market laborious instances—that’s wanted for evolution,” Zirlin stated. “You can not evolve, truly, while you’re going by means of a extremely nice growth. You’ll change in different methods, however when it comes to determining the subsequent factor—that’s what these instances are for.”
