Solana Shooter Game ‘Nyan Heroes’ Shuts Down Amid Funding Issues
Solana cat-themed hero shooter sport Nyan Heroes is shutting down, 9 Lives Interactive introduced Friday, with the developer citing an lack of ability to safe the required funding to complete the sport.
The free-to-play hero shooter lately accomplished its fourth play take a look at by way of the Epic Video games Retailer, which included its largest play-to-earn airdrop of the NYAN token on Solana. A full sport launch was deliberate for subsequent winter.
The Overwatch-style PC sport launched its first pre-alpha take a look at in March 2024 and in the end generated multiple million gamers throughout its 4 play assessments, with greater than 250,000 gamers wishlisting the title throughout the Epic Video games Retailer and Steam.
“Regardless of these accomplishments and discussions round publishing, new investments, grants and acquisition—we weren’t in a position to safe the required capital to see the sport to completion,” Nyan Heroes posted on X (previously Twitter). “This isn’t the result we had been hoping for. The business is in a troublesome spot proper now, and Nyan Heroes will sadly be closing its doorways.”
In an e-mail to Decrypt, 9 Lives CEO and Inventive Director Max Fu shared some hope for a future for Nyan Heroes, however any short-term end result is unlikely.
“It has been a tough previous couple of months,” he informed Decrypt. “At the moment, we’re exploring acquisition of the studio and/or the IP. Some discussions are underway, however I think it might take a while to finalize a choice.”
It has been about 1 month since our 4th playtest.
We’re extremely grateful for the positivity and help that you’ve proven for our newest launch and all of our prior playtests.
Sadly, regardless of the superb progress that we made through the years, the most recent product…
— Nyan Heroes (@nyanheroes) Could 16, 2025
Nyan Heroes’ blockchain elements—which weren’t required for play—included the NYAN token on Solana blockchain, in addition to Cat NFTs that had been minted in 2021 earlier than the sport was even out there to play.
Maybe unsurprisingly, information of the sport closing its doorways didn’t bode effectively for the NYAN token, now down almost 40% on the day and buying and selling under a $1 million market cap. Buying and selling at $0.006, it’s now 98.5% off its all-time excessive of $0.45 from Could 2024.
The undertaking’s closure continues a development of Web3 video games struggling to seek out their footing.
In February, Ethereum sport Thriller Society suspended improvement, additionally pointing to the battle to lift funds to proceed. Earlier this month, Gala Video games introduced it should finish help for The Strolling Lifeless: Empires in July.
“One other sport down,” pseudonymous Treeverse sport founder and investor Loopify posted on X. “I invested in Nyan Heroes and so they boast extraordinarily good stats, with the consideration it was incentivized, so [it] did not matter a lot. As a result of on the finish of the day, all that issues is internet income, solely achieved by product market match.”
Gaming tokens are struggling to carry their worth, as effectively. In early April, gaming tokens had fallen fully exterior of CoinGecko’s high 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap. Immutable’s IMX is the one gaming-centric token that’s at the moment again within the high 100, as of this writing.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
