👾 Hot take Friday

No surprise here: New data suggests gaming tokens are dead and have overwhelmingly flopped this year. 

Other recent data has found that over 76% of 1,788 crypto games tracked have been discontinued, with 67currently in development. 

Today we’re looking at two of the biggest crypto games being built right now. 

While the most potential upside in crypto gaming may still be lower-risk GameFi-focused indies and mobile games, EVE Frontier and Reaper Actual are among the very small handful of higher-budget PC titles that could make a splash.

— Kate Irwin

• EVE Frontier picks Sui for all its blockchain elements

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 👍

  • My hot take: Sui needs EVE more than EVE needs Sui. Both will benefit from this deal, and I think it’s good they chose each other. The truth is, this game could have used just about any blockchain with smart contracts for its crypto elements. They could have chosen Solana, Base, an Avalanche L1, or their own Arbitrum chain, or chosen from a slew of other options and made it work. But Sui really needs a breakout game to cement itself as a chain with games, and EVE Frontier will do that.  

  • This is still good for crypto overall despite the fact that even if EF is a smash hit, it’s unlikely its “normie” players onboarded via the game will venture outside the game’s borders to the rest of crypto. Sui is not EVM or SVM compatible, and is more of a siloed ecosystem. 

  • But the most successful games from a revenue standpoint are the ones that suck you in and make it hard for you to imagine playing anything else (the “stickiness” factor). EF could be one of those, but for crypto gaming. 

  • EVE Frontier was previously using Redstone, an EVM L2 I hadn’t heard of before my conversation with CCP a few months ago. 

  • Sui could be paying EVE Frontier to use their chain, not unlike how Ronin is getting financially rewarded for using Optimism, but we don’t have specifics either way. A Sui rep (unsurprisingly) told me they aren’t currently providing any info around the monetary amount of the deal, but hinted that more news is coming soon.

  • Sui has positioned itself as a gaming chain in the past, but it’s got about 74 DeFi projects with $2.4 billion TVL across them plus other protocols like Walrus for other use cases like decentralized storage. So IMO it’s not really a “gaming chain,” just a chain with some games (and now EVE Frontier).

  • EVE Frontier is one of the very small handful of crypto games I’m actually excited about. The CCP team is smart, experienced and hardcore about building out massive, complex galactic game economies. The big question is: Will their existing fanbase come around to crypto? 

• Sorare is moving to Solana

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 🤷‍♀️ 

  • My hot take: I had forgotten Sorare existed, but from a naming/brand standpoint, Sorare really should have always been on Solana. Moving to Solana will help them, but doesn’t do much for the rest of crypto. Also notable is data showing both Sorare and Football.fun are seeing the same amount of daily sales volume right now (both saw a surge in August).

    • Sorare 24-hour volume: $584,785

    • Football.fun 24-hour volume: $539,074

• Reaper Actual launches Alpha Bundles, big YouTuber streams the game

  • Good for crypto/bad for crypto? 🤷‍♀️ 

  • My hot take: It’s great to see this game’s development is moving along, but I’m against making players pay a premium for early access to an unfinished game as a revenue strategy. Selling $30-$75 packs isn’t enough revenue to outweigh the cost of the potential players lost here, or those disappointed by the look of the alpha.

    • Asking players to fork up for an unfinished game that costs more than the cost of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (preorders are $70 on Steam) doesn’t make sense to me. 

    • Normie gamers are not going to buy these. This is effectively a push for sales from crypto-natives and traders, who expect ROI, which puts further pressure on the team to “deliver.” 

    • Gamers outside of crypto want to try before they buy, and the “freemium” model used by other shooters like Fortnite can lead to a lot more revenue in the long run. 

    • As others have pointed out, Reaper Actual paying big FPS influencers like TimtheTatman to play an early version of the game isn’t necessarily a good idea, either. Many viewers compared the game to a mobile game in the comments section, and others even called it “Temu Tarkov” or “Temu CoD.” 

    • It might have been better to just wait until the game was more polished before showing it off to Web2 audiences, who are very critical of new releases and will inevitably (and unfairly) compare this game to those with quadruple its budget.

Crypto is changing TradFi derivatives as we know them. 

DAS: London will feature all the builders driving this change. 

Get your ticket today with promo code: DROP100 for £100 off.

📅 October 13-15 | London

My take on what game devs should be thinking about right now:

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