A Rash Of Web3 Game Project Closures

Last weekend was an inauspicious time for CCP Games to announce EVE Frontier's exit from its closed alpha. Recently five Web3/blockchain gaming projects announced they were closing. I call them projects because as far as I can tell they never reached a commercial launch ready state. The games were:

Ember Sword - The game was advertised as ...

... a classless, free to play MMORPG set in the fantasy world of Thanabus. With four regions and a combat system based on equipped weapons rather than fixed classes, it offered a mix of PvE and PvP gameplay. The game was supposed to feature a player-driven economy and NFT-based land ownership, built on the Ethereum network.

Players could trade cosmetic items, own land plots, and take part in shaping the game world. At its peak, Ember Sword boasted a large, engaged community and received major backing from high-profile investors, including Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and YouTuber Dr Disrespect.

In development since 2018, the game conducted a massive land sale in 2021, raising $203 million from 35 thousand applicants. The game did reach an early access launch in December 2024, with critics describing the gameplay as underdeveloped and unengaging. The game announced its closure on 21 May.

Tatsumeeko: Lumina Fates - The game, developed by the Singapore-based Tatsu Works, was described as...

a fantasy MMORPG-lite that combined exploration, farming, combat, and player-driven narratives within the vibrant world of Ielia. It was designed to function natively on Discord, iOS, Android, and web browsers, expanding on the team's experience from their gamified Discord platform, Tatsu.GG. 

The game raised $7.5 million in 2022 with plans to use Ethereum and Solana for in-game economies and NFTs. Tatsu announced the closure of the project on 19 May. The company plans to return to its roots as a developer of "lightweight, community-based experiences."

Nyan Heroes - The game had an admittedly unique theme, cats piloting giant mechs. But despite four playtests attracting over 1 million testers, the developers had to close down the project as the most recent build "failed to drive the player numbers" they needed to continue and no buyer could be found to continue development.

Those investing in the project's cryptocurrency and NFT's were hit hard when the news of the closure dropped on 16 May.

After the news broke, the game's $NYAN token lost over 40% of its value. It is now down nearly 99% from its all-time high. The Genesis Cat NFTs were hit just as hard, dropping over 70% in price. The floor value now sits around 0.024 SOL on Magic Eden.

Blast Royale - Blast Royale was a mobile game whose developer announced it was shutting down but making the game open source. The game was described as "a fun, frenetic adrenaline fuelled short session game that is about packing as much fun onto the blockchain as possible."

According to an official Discord announcement by Blast Royale’s core team member Renny, the studio tried exploring “every path and possibility,” and after doing so ended up deciding to ultimately discontinue development of their top-down battle royale.

Essentially, the company ran out of funds and wasn't able to find any investor or avenue through which they could raise more money to extend their runway. They don’t have the financing needed to continue paying their team for their hard work, and as a result need to stop development and ultimately close down entirely. In an earlier Discord announcement on April 25th, Renny did share that they are facing “some serious financial challenges” as the TGE didn’t help out as much as they hoped, and the existing in-game economy isn’t generating enough revenue to cover development costs.

Rumble Kong League - A 3v3 basketball game endorsed by Steph Curry, the game was massively underfunded.

Once known for its flashy marketing and NBA star endorsement (Steph Curry), the project fizzled out. Their $FAME token launched with just 12 ETH of liquidity, according to web3 content creator StarPlatinum. Unsurprisingly, the price tanked. Community mods stopped getting paid, the team announced they were "starting from zero," and the project was reportedly sold to a company in Brazil. 

And while five projects closing in seven days is bad, the total for 2025 is up to 17, as two of the closures occurred after the below tweet went out.

Web3 Game Closures | 2025
(so far...)

•Battlebound/Anterris
•Blade of God
•Blast Royale
•Champions Ascension
•Derby Race
•Goombles
•Junglexyz
•Krptomon
•Loot Legends
•Metalcore
•Mystery Society
•Nyan Heroes
•RoboKiden
•Rumble Kong League
•Valeria Studios

Who's… pic.twitter.com/iB0rydhXyX

— Tr3vor (@tr3vorx) May 17, 2025

I realize that only two of the five games were MMOs, the timing only two weeks after the latest spate of closures was not exactly good optics for CCP Games. I also think the closures justifies the studio's emphasis on gameplay rather than real world wealth in marketing EVE Frontier. Because the money aspect just isn't sustainable in the long run. Enjoyable gameplay, as people have witnessed over the years, can make a game last for decades.

Tax Day Thoughts On Crypto In MMORPGs

On Saturday I filed my federal and state income tax returns. By file, I mean I opened up the H&R Block software, let it import most of my financial information, did a little additional entry, and hit the send buttons. I noticed a section I had never seen before. Did I convert any cryptocurrencies into real life money in 2022? I can't get away from the subject, can I? 

The idea that the government wants to tax cryptocurrencies is another reason to avoid all these web3/blockchain games popping up all over. Do I really want to play a game in which the government has an interest?

I know that a lot of people want the government more involved in regulating video games. I remember the bad old days when those who really don't like video games decided games were too violent and the government needed to step in. I really shouldn't write in the past tense as politicians continue to blame violence in video games for mass shootings in the United States. 

Another subject I've seen many games journalists and content creators advocate government regulation of gambling within video games. Looking back, the gambling issue was a vector many saw as attacking lootboxes in video games. I'm pretty sure many cheered as the Washington State Gambling Commission went after Valve for skins gambling in connection with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive back in 2016. Some of those same people are complaining that Valve's countermeasures are a little overzealous in 2023. But hey, Valve is going what the government wants, so it's okay, right?

Which now leads to the Web3 craze in MMORPG development. As I saw while preparing my tax returns, the federal government wants its cut of the cryptocurrency market. Then again, the Internal Revenue Service wants its cut on everything. If the IRS is readying an effort to increase enforcement against bartenders, waiters, and others who receive tips, what makes anyone think that eventually cash-hungry governments around the world won't become interested in all these crypto games popping up? Especially if people call on government to "Do something!".

In all honesty, the tax issue is probably the biggest obstacle to my playing one of these Web3/blockchain games like Project Awakening. At the very least, such a game will need to have robust cryptocurrency tracking and reporting features to deal with government agencies demanding a cut of my in-game revenue.  But do I really want to report what I do with my free time to the government? Especially what I do inside a video game? For the makers of these Web3/blockchain video games, you have a high bar to clear.

Would You Play EVE 3.0?

On Friday, venture capital firm a16z published a video featuring an interview with CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson. The interview was another example of the tough financial situation Pearl Abyss finds itself in. After losing ₩41.1 billion ($35.6 million) in 2022, the South Korean game company finds itself still trying to develop Crimson Desert and PokeV. In order to fulfill one of Pearl Abyss' major goals, developing a Web 3 game, CCP Games had to look for outside financing.

Mention of subjects like web 3, crpytocurrencies, blockchains, and play to earn send many, if not most, serious gamers fleeing. Honestly, I can't blame them. The closest I've come to playing anything remotely like a game having those components is EVE Online. Which leads to the question, if Project Awakening is a modernized version of EVE Online, would you play the game?

What do I mean by modernized? For example, correcting CCP's original sin of building a single-threaded application. Back in the beginning, CCP Games gambled that the future was bigger and bigger processing chips rather than multi-threaded processing. In other words, imagine an EVE Online capable of hosting fights of 5,000 players comfortably.

Or what about the mission system? Did anyone else get tired of rescuing the Damsel at least once a week? I know I did. But the old system in EVE involved handcrafting each mission, meaning updating those missions is prohibitively expensive. What if the mission system is dynamic and easy to update? Does anyone find that prospect attractive?

What about the user interface? Instead of being tied to the old spreadsheets-in-space UI, what if the developers were allowed to build a completely new UI without having to worry about legacy code? Would a better UI draw players in to play the game?

Talking about legacy code, is anyone interested in playing a game in which certain bugs never are fixed because they are attached to long abandoned features that still affect systems? EVE Online veterans know I'm referring to the POS code. For anyone who doesn't know what POS code is, all I have to say is, ignorance is best.

Or the map. No, I'm not referring to the horrible in-game maps that require the use of external maps like Dotlan. Instead, I'm referring to the security areas within the New Eden cluster. Imagine an EVE where, instead of high security space dominating the middle of the map, a disaster occurred that destroyed civilization in the middle of the map and the NPC empires controlled the outer ring of regions. Each of the four empires (Amarr, Caldari, Galente, Minmatar) would control space at the cardinal points of the map, with security steadily dropping until the core of the cluster is reached. Would that entice players to the game?

For a more general public, or for the really old veterans of the game, what if avatar play is added to the EVE universe? What if, instead of trying to developer their own engine (Carbon), CCP decided to use Unreal Engine 5 instead? We know during the VR years that EVE characters and graphics were ported into UE4 for EVE: Valkyrie. So the technology exists. Would players want to play a game in which the developers finally deliver on the promise of walking in stations?

Once again CCP cannot do this on its own. Pearl Abyss cannot help financially, although they will back CCP making a game if it incorporates web3 technology. The only way a game like the one I described above gets made is if the crypto-bros and their money become involved. So the question becomes, would the visceral revulsion at web3/blockchain/NFT/play to earn games override the desire to play an updated version of EVE Online? Would you play an EVE 3.0?

Crypto, FOMO, And The Crypto Blackhole

I don’t think there will be much progress on this front until developers are asking “How can cryptocurrency make my game more fun, if at all?” rather than “How can I add cryptocurrency into my game?”

- Tyler Cloutier, co-founder Clockwork Labs

Sometimes I travel down a rabbit hole and find some potentially surprising things. One of those rabbit holes involved Clockwork Labs. I wrote briefly about the company last week, as CCP Games was involved in a $22 million round of investment in Clockwork Labs in June 2022. Besides discovering CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson was involved in an initial $4.3 million round of investment in August 2021, I found the BitCraft website hosts a blog. What I found kind of surprised me.

A month after the June 2022 round of funding, co-founder of Clockwork Labs, Tyler Cloutier, wrote a blog post titled "Thoughts on Cryptocurrencies and Games".  He had this to say about adding crypto-currencies to the company's game in development, BitCraft.

I actually don’t personally have a problem with using any technology that would help us achieve it. Fun is not about technology, it’s about game design and how players feel. My issue with cryptocurrency, I suppose, is not with cryptocurrency itself (energy usage notwithstanding), it’s that it’s used almost exclusively for high stakes FOMO. Using FOMO to drive players to our game or to bid up the prices on our hypothetical NFTs makes everything about money, rather than building a good game. It *doesn’t* increase the longevity of our game. It *doesn’t* make our community any healthier. And it *doesn’t* make the game more fun. In fact, so far in the places it’s been tried it has basically done the opposite in the long-term. For those reasons, we’re currently of the opinion that adding cryptocurrency to BitCraft isn’t going to help us towards our goal.

FOMO, or fear of missing out, is a practice found in a lot of MMORPGs. Cloutier goes on to quote Warren Buffet:

“People start being interested in something because it’s going up [in value], not because they understand it or anything else. But the guy next door, who they know is dumber than they are, is getting rich and they aren’t, and their spouse is saying can’t you figure it out too? It is so contagious. So that’s a permanent part of the system.”

But according to Cloutier, players are not the only ones enticed by FOMO. Game companies also do not want to miss out on the potential piles of cash web3 and cryptocurrencies can ultimately pile up.

In August of 2021, the crypto collectibles game Axie Infinity made $364,000,000 in revenue. I have relatively deep connections in the game industry and let me tell you that got the attention of every game developer I know, both huge conglomerates and small startups. The interest was 0% motivated by wanting to make a better game and 100% motivated by FOMO. By now the wave of fear has largely subsided and a lot of companies have stopped or slowed pursuing it, but rest assured it will be back.

When the potential revenue reaches 9 digits, a lot of game companies will ignore the wishes of players and play to the investors. So despite the negative consequences we've seen, game executives still want to grab for the brass ring.

Cloutier also indentified a pattern in the development of games using cryptocurrencies he calls "The Crypto Blackhole"

1. Developer states that they’re going to sell crypto assets to fund development of a game
   
   
2. Developer releases exclusive crypto in-game assets (land, cloths, creatures, energy, whatever)
   
   
3. Crypto speculators buy up all of the in-game assets hoping to make money on them
   
   
4. Crypto speculators aren’t interested in playing the game, because they prefer speculating
   
   
5. Gamers are not interested in playing the game, and can’t afford to buy the in-game resources even if they were
   
   
6. The game has no players
   
   
7. Crypto speculators encourage the game developers to make more speculative assets, rather than make the game better

The effects of the process result in what most gamers would consider unsuccessful games. While enticing due to the amounts of money made on the way down, the game's community becomes deadlocked and the game developers cannot get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.

I knew I had to write a short post on this topic after I saw the date on the blog post. The co-founder of a company writing something like this a month after some people involved in a $22 million round of venture capital funding thought they were buying into a crypto-game might have been shocking to say the least. But perhaps more importantly, I have reasons to dislike these types of game that go beyond "everyone knows those types of games are bad."

More Web3 Activity By CCP Games

And why do you boost a message about a meeting between the CEO and some crypto investors on that account?  Because crypto is coming to EVE Online maybe? (Edit: The EVE Online twitter account has since undone this retweet.)

- Wilhelm Arcturus, The Ancient Gaming Noob, 29 March 2022

I have to admit that the recent announcement of a $40 million round of funding for CCP Games' next project caught me by surprise. Not that the funding happened. Instead, that the entity making the announcement was CCP Games in Reykjavik and not Pearl Abyss in Anyang. 

I was under the impression Pearl Abyss, through its financial subsidiary Pearl Abyss Capital, was handling all Web3/blockchain/NFT investments. I was wrong. I did a little more digging and found two more transactions involving CCP Games and Web3/blockchain/play2earn gaming. But instead of receiving money, CCP Games was part of the investing groups.

One of my favorite gdc moments was this private session with @HilmarVeigar to talk about @EveOnline with the @YieldGuild, @Delphi_Digital and @BitkraftVC teams. pic.twitter.com/6Eb4gi9a0k

— ED3N (@eden_holdings) March 29, 2022

The first transaction occurred in April 2022, when CCP took part in a $20 million initial coin offering for Civitas. Civitas is a 4x strategy game built on the blockchain. The game was supposed to go into beta this quarter, but Directive Games appears on pace to miss that target. But the more interesting fact, at least for this post, is the list of investors and strategic partners buying tokens.

Going back and reading Wilhelm's post from one year ago and he did a very good job identifying some of the investors. The reaction to the tweet was so bad MassivelyOP reported on the outrage. But the tweet that upset EVE players wasn't about EVE Online. It was about investing in another company's game. 

CCP was not done yet, though. In June, CCP Games became involved in a round of $22 million in investment funding for Clockwork Labs. The company is designing a game called BitCraft, a "community sandbox massively multiplayer online role-playing game.'

In the VentureBeat article, the author named some of the investors.

Andreessen Horowitz led the round to further develop their community sandbox MMORPG, BitCraft, alongside a new unannounced database technology that powers the game.

David Baszucki, Roblox founder and CEO, also participated in the round as a private investor. A16z and Baszucki join an existing list of investors and games industry legends and leaders, including Supercell, CCP Games CEO Hilmar Petursson, and Unity cofounder David Helgason.

Andreessen Horowitz. The same company that led the $40 million funding round announced last week. I'm guessing some networking occurred around the organization of the funding round.

One interesting note. While the author notes the involvement of Hilmar, Crunchbase indicates the funding Hilmar was associated with came from CCP Games, not his personal funds.

One final note. I wish I was writing an anniversary post for a fairly infamous tweet in the EVE community. But until the $40 million round of funding, I was blissfully unaware of everything happening. Once I knew which threads to pull, however, following the trail was fairly simple. And in some ways, the story is a lot better than the alternative.

Project Awakening - The Web3 Game

No, this post is not referring to Cygames upcoming RPG for the Playstation 5 due to release this sometime in 2023. Yesterday CCP Games, a subsidiary of Pearl Abyss, announced a $40 million round of venture capital funding for its upcoming video game based on blockchain technology. No official name was mentioned in any of the various press releases issued yesterday. Instead, press outlets started to refer to the effort by the URL of the information page that went live at the same time, Project Awakening.

As is my practice, the main portion of the press release is below:

Reykjavík, Iceland – 21 March 2023 – CCP Games, creators of sci-fi spacefaring MMO EVE Online, announced today that $40M in financing has been secured from external partners. This financing will allow CCP Games to build upon the discoveries of its research & development team to enable the full-scale development of a new AAA title utilizing blockchain technology, set within the EVE Universe.

"Since its inception, CCP Games’ vision has been to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life. Now, with advancements made within blockchain, we can forge a new universe deeply imbued with our expertise in player agency and autonomy, empowering players to engage in new ways. This financing has marked an exciting frontier in our studio history as we begin our third decade of virtual world operations. We are humbled by the confidence from our partners in the development of this new title,” said CCP Games CEO, Hilmar V. Pétursson.

With key game systems developed on-chain, this new project will also leverage smart-contract blockchain technology, focusing on persistence, composability and truly open third-party development to create a new relationship between virtual worlds and players.

This financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Makers Fund, BITKRAFT, Kingsway Capital, HASHED, Nexon, and additional participants.

“CCP Games is a pioneer in virtual worlds and digital economies with 25 years of experience creating living sandboxes with unparalleled depth. They're a veteran team and we believe in their ambitious vision to deliver incredible player experiences at the intersection of best-in-class game design and blockchain technology,” said a16z General Partner, Jonathan Lai.

“The depth and nuances of EVE have become a frequent point of reference in blockchain gaming and we are therefore thrilled to support the team's impressive vision of expanding the EVE Universe utilizing this technology. As a former employee, it's a great personal joy to be reunited with CCP and to witness their continued passion for creating truly meaningful virtual worlds," said Makers Fund Principal, Alli Óttarsson.

“We've long marveled at stories of interstellar war, spaceships forever lost, and the constant challenges of staying ahead of emergent, sovereign play patterns. Hilmar and the team's experience is unmatched, and we're excited to see how they use blockchain to let players dream further,” said BITKRAFT Ventures Partner, Carlos Pereira.

Alongside independent financing, this new title’s production is separate from current and previously disclosed projects, including EVE Online, which is now in its landmark 20th year.

CCP Games looks forward to sharing updates as development progresses. Register at www.projectawakening.io for future news and announcements. To learn more about open positions at CCP Games, visit the careers page.

I will definitely need to do research into the topic, because this sentence threw up some serious red flags:

With key game systems developed on-chain, this new project will also leverage smart-contract blockchain technology, focusing on persistence, composability and truly open third-party development to create a new relationship between virtual worlds and players.

Quite frankly the sentence sounds like something Bethesda's Todd Howard and Cloud Imperium Games' Chris Roberts cobbled together. The only thing missing was that the new game's world would hold 16 times the resources of EVE Online.

In an effort to learn more about why venture capitalists would throw $40 million in CCP's direction, I began looking into the lead company, Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z or AH Capital Management, LLC. Specifically, what was the attraction of CCP Games?

Perhaps a Twitter thread from Jon Lai, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a founding investor of a16z Games Fund One, sheds some light.

2/ years before the first blockchain, sci-fi MMO @EveOnline proved many of the core principles of web3

EVE is a virtual world in which every item from drones to dreadnoughts is player-made & tradable in an open economy. players self-organize into complex corporations & alliances pic.twitter.com/yxNvaqLbMg

— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) March 21, 2023

I've said for what has turned into years now that EVE Online was built for the concepts of web3, the blockchain and, most importantly, play2earn mechanics. Here is a professional basically backing up my beliefs.

4/ we believe the next generation of web3 games will share many of the principles that EVE pioneered - open economies, player-driven social systems, composability etc

CCP has long led the way here and that’s why we’re thrilled to lead the seed round in their new AAA title

— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) March 21, 2023

Now we get to the profit motive. When writers convert major null sec battles into real world monetary values, eventually the money people notice. I don't know if anyone pointed out to the folks at a16z that, if included in the monthly economic reports, RMT tokens like PLEX and skill injectors and extractors make up approximately 50% of the EVE economy. Just as the null sec powers skim ISK off the PLEX trade in Perimeter's Tranquility Trading Tower, the investment consortium probably envisions skimming real life money off of every sanctioned RMT transaction in the new game.

6/ to lead this new project, Hilmar has assembled a team of world-class experts including director Sæmundur Hermannsson

we’ve gotten to know the team well through many late-night working sessions and even celebrated as one with the player community at EVE Fanfest pic.twitter.com/w0u9Ddv0f8

— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) March 21, 2023

If Lai is calling Hilmar a founder of CCP, maybe he hasn't done enough research into the company (CCP Games was founded by Reynir Harðarson, Þórólfur Beck Kristjónsson and Ívar Kristjánsson). Then again, perhaps fluffing up the CEO of a target company is just part of the job.

Apparently EVE Brand Director Sæmundur Hermannsson is heading up the project. I believe his CCP dev name is CCP Goodfella. Hopefully Lai's positive impression is based more on the people actually working on the project and less on the front man doing the talking.

8/ none of the above should be taken as investment advice; please see https://t.co/9VZp1BM6NA for more information

— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) March 21, 2023

I included the last tweet for completeness. The disclaimer about investment advice is important and I don't want to contribute to any misunderstandings. Plus, given the subject of this post, I thought the warning was appropriate.

I learned one additional fact from yesterday's news. While Pearl Abyss wants to publish Web3 games, we now know the company does not have the money to develop Web3 games. If our overlords in Anyang had the money, CCP Games would not have had to go seek out venture capital to complete development. As the world discovered on the Q4 2022 earnings call, Pearl Abyss lost $35.6 million in 2022. The amount raised in this first round of funding was $40 million.

I will have to follow-up on the story as I did not include so much information. But I wanted to get something out quickly before I fell too far behind the news. Hopefully readers found the post informative.

Pearl Abyss Invested In Intella X

Pearl Abyss has a history of investing in technology related to the play-to-earn business model. In November 2021, the company invested $3 million in Hyperreal, a Metaverse company, as part of a $7 million round of funding. Pearl Abyss also led a ₩3 billion round of funding into TUNiB, a "Natural language processing artificial intelligence start-up", that same month. Four weeks ago, the South Korean game company made another investment in play-to-earn technology.

On 17 January 2023, NEOWIZ issued the following press release:

SEONGNAM, South Korea, Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- One of South Korea's leading game giants, NEOWIZ, has announced that it has successfully raised $12M in private funding for its Web3 gaming platform, Intella X, in anticipation of its upcoming launch on Polygon.

The raise included over +20 investors from various sectors and includes notable partners such as Polygon, Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, Planetarium, Big Brain Holdings, Global Coin Research, Crit Ventures, JoyCity, Pearl Abyss, XL Games, and WEMIX.

As the next-generation Web3 gaming platform, Intella X's mission is to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 through unique platform protocols, services, and games.

"Develop and Earn", and "Contribute-Play and Earn"

What sets Intella X apart from its competitors is that the platform perpetually rewards the contributors of its ecosystem (i.e Game developers and users) with its native platform token, the Intella X token through its unique, rewarding service protocol, 'Proof of Contribution'.

Furthermore, the platform also redistributes shares of its revenue back to the contributors through its unique decentralized revenue distribution protocol to further exercise the fundamental values of Web3.

In combination with its one-of-a-kind service protocols and wide genres of games in its 2023 lineup, the platform offers additional features in an effort to remove high-entry barriers and to improve user experience in Web3.  From streamlined wallet creation to implementation of meta transactions, Intella X has set its mission on providing high-quality games and user-friendly environment to accelerate mass adoption.

Intella X is set to launch on Polygon in the first quarter of 2023 along with its proprietary Web3 wallet, DEX (Decentralized Exchange), NFT marketplace, launchpad, and games.

Intella X has a list of investors on its website.

Intella-X touts the following advantages for developers:

Discoverability and Accessibility: "For developers, the Intella X addon platform offers a one-of-a-kind platform solution for migrating existing or new gaming applications into Web3 while maintaining their presence, availability, and discoverability on traditional third-party stores. Simply put, developers can release their applications in major storefronts such as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store to retain their Web2 user base while increasing accessibility and discoverability to wider audiences."

Monetization/Payments: "Through Intella X, game developers do not have to abandon their existing monetization (i.e., in-app purchases, Ad revenue, subscriptions, etc.) or rely solely on Web3 monetization. Instead, by integrating Web3 components with Intella X, game developers not only retain their traditional revenue streams, but also supplement their sources with Web3 revenue through NFTs, marketplace, digital asset transactions, and even Intella X’s native platform token, Intella X (IX), via the innovative ‘Proof of Contribution’ protocol."

Proof of Contribution: "For developers, the protocol provides Web3 revenue stream on top of their traditional Web2 monetization features by perpetually rewarding game developers with the Intella X token based on the game’s contribution."

The play-to-earn function is listed by Intella X under the Proof of Contribution category.

For gamers, not only can users “Play and Earn”, but also “Contribute and Earn” native by providing various types of value contributions such as, providing liquidity, or staking in order to participate in the innovative protocol and earn the Intella X token.

When gamers see NFTs mentioned, they tend to run away. The Intella X service does support the sale of NFTs, or will in the near future thru its Launchpad and Marketplace services.

Launchpad: "NFT Launchpad is a place where game developers and NFT creators to showcase their projects, mint, and pre-sell NFTs, and generate buzz in the Intella X community.

"And through the Intella X NFT Launchpad, users can get hands-on exclusive, rare NFTs, ranging from unique artworks, PFP projects, and game assets. The launchpad service is a powerful search and discovery tool that allows users to easily find the hottest, upcoming NFT projects and get the opportunity to participate to earn rare NFTs in their collections."

Marketplace: "The NFT Marketplace for Intella X is the trading hub for all NFTs in the Intella X ecosystem. Game developers and NFT project creators can showcase their unique collections where users can buy, sell and trade rare NFTs from various projects."

Admittedly I did a lot of copy and pasting for this blog post. Then again, the writers whose articles I read did a lot of copy, pasting, and rewording themselves. I'm not sure how many people really understand this technology. But I do know that investors go crazy over the subject, so to attract investors, companies will invest or otherwise try to participate in what is hot. And after listening to Pearl Abyss' latest earnings call, they need all the help they can get.