🫡 Ello chap

Welcome back to The Drop.

It’s Friday! That means we all get to log off soon, touch some grass, check out the spring flowers…

But who am I kidding, I’ll probably just spend the weekend setting up my PC at our new place. Moving takes forever. 

Have a great weekend!

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

Peaky Blinders gets a crypto game

The period drama television series Peaky Blinders has been licensed for a blockchain game, Banijay Entertainment and crypto startup Anonymous Labs announced on Thursday.

The game will have an in-game cryptocurrency and a mix of “interactive experiences” and action sequences, according to a blog post. 

The game will be set in the post-World War I era in Birmingham, England, like the show.

The show follows the gang known as the Peaky Blinders and stars Irish actor Cillian Murphy. It aired from 2013 until 2022 on BBC networks and is streamable on Netflix. 

While the game’s title and further details have not yet been revealed, the game is slated to launch in 2026.

Anonymous Labs is trying to bring “Web2” IP into crypto. It previously launched a token for the animated character and comic book cat Simon’s Cat, but that token is down 89% from its all-time high four months ago.

David Christopher, group director of licensing and merchandising at Banijay Rights, brokered the Peaky Blinders crypto game deal. Banijay Rights acquired Peaky Blinders’ production company, Caryn Mandabach Productions Limited, last year. Banijay previously struck Peaky Blinders deals with CMPL in 2022 before ultimately acquiring the company.

This won’t be the first time the world of Peaky Blinders has appeared in a game, though. 

In 2023, narrative VR game Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom released to mixed reviews on Steam and didn’t grab much attention. Peaky Blinders: Mastermind is a puzzle game that was released in 2020 and got better reviews (and more of them), but it was ultimately discontinued on Steam in late 2022.

More recently, Banijay facilitated a deal for Peaky Blinders with the (non-crypto) MMO World of Tanks. Themed characters and a special tank were available in-game as part of a unique battle pass season from March 20 until March 31 last month. 

There have been a handful of traditional media licensing plays in the crypto gaming space lately — though most have been with older IP that is not as known among contemporary Western gaming audiences. 

SEGA has licensed Code of Joker and Sangokushi Taisen for different crypto games, and Ubisoft has built one based on its retro Might and Magic game franchise for Immutable. 

In years past, Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. have explored crypto plays, but none have made a major splash with audiences.

SEGA’s crypto game launching soon

KAI: Sangokushi Taisen – Battle of Three Kingdoms, or B3K for short, will launch at the end of this month. It’ll be available for PC and mobile gamers for starters.

The game has over a million preregistrations, according to the team. Crypto firm Doublejump Tokyo developed the game using the licensed SEGA IP.

The Sangokushi Taisen franchise is set in China in the 1300s. It began as a series of arcade games in the early 2000s. The most recent iteration in the series before the upcoming B3K was a PC title that came out back in 2011.

B3K will have “Warlord” NFTs and the SGC token. The token will offer governance and staking abilities, and it will be used for rewards.

TON Foundation gets new CEO 

MoonPay co-founder Maximilian Crown is TON Foundation’s new CEO, the foundation announced Thursday.

Crown was also MoonPay’s CFO and COO and worked at the company for over six years before transitioning into his current role at Telegram-based TON. Crown remains on MoonPay’s board.

TON, which stands for The Open Network, has grown in recent years thanks to a surge in simple Telegram games and Telegram-based token airdrops. TON has grown from four million to 41 million active accounts, according to the TON Foundation.

• Crypto-optional battle royale shooter Off The Grid is adding “Legendary” items next week, Gunzilla Games CEO Vlad Korolev said on Thursday. That means Off The Grid might become a little more competitive — and even more intense — than it already was. 

• MetaMask now lets you pay for ETH mainnet gas fees with tokens in your wallet that are on that network. USDT, USDC, DAI, wETH, wBTC, wstETH and wSOL are supported as ETH mainnet gas tokens to start.

• Dojo Dash, a crypto prediction betting game on Abstract, is now live. The game lets players wager on which tokens will make the most gains over a period of time.

• Line Friends is building an AI NFT game using the blockchain storage protocol Walrus from Sui builder Mysten Labs. Line is a collection of 11 cutesy animal characters created in Korea back in 2011.