Original Author: Stacy Muur

Original translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Since early 2024, the performance of Web3 games has been worse than other cryptocurrency substitute areas, with a market capitalization decline of 33%, while the substitute currency market has only declined by 14%.

However, Web3 games still remain a strong participant, accounting for 30% of all Decentralization applications (dApps) activity, with a daily active wallet number reaching 2.1 million.

Let's delve into the key insights from the latest Delphi research on Web3 games.

Key Points

• The financing of Web3 games reached its peak in February and March, with monthly investments ranging from 60 to 100 million US dollars. The total financing amount in 2024 reached 673 million US dollars. However, this only accounts for 41.35% of the total financing amount in the first quarter of 2022.
• Over 50 games were launched in 2024, including Xai, Pixels, and Notcoin, which were significantly profitable projects.
• Xai raised $40 million within 3 months. Pixels achieved a FDV of $4.8 billion and 1 million daily active users (DAU) within 3 weeks of its launch. Notcoin attracted 35 million users, reached a market capitalization of $1 billion, and had no external financing.
• The FDV of Portal has dropped from 4 billion US dollars to 2.8 billion US dollars, and the value loss of Overworld Incarnas is as high as 75%. Mavia and Pixelmon also crashed by over 60% after TGE.
• Shooting games are still the mainstream type in Web3, among which Off the Grid stands out for its $110 million in financing and collaboration with Sony and Microsoft.
• In the MMORPG, the most anticipated game is MapleStory Universe, with a funding amount of 1 billion dollars.
• Pirate Nation is a completely on-chain game that is rising rapidly, with an active player count of 100,000 and a revenue of $1 million in the past 6 weeks.
• Mobile games such as King of Destiny and Matr1x Fire rise have quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of users. Matr1x Fire has been downloaded over 3.5 million times.
• Ronin and TON ecosystems are leading in the Web3 gaming industry. Ronin benefits from the success of Axie Infinity, while TON provides seamless integration with Telegram, reaching 900 million Telegram users. The success of Notcoin and Hamster Kombat further confirms this.

This summary outlines the key points in Delphi's 'Mid-Year Gaming Review' report. Click here to read the full report.

Web3 Game follow: Summary

Here are some recent games worth following, most of which have not yet been tracked on DappRadar. For statistics on the most popular games, please see this dashboard.

Source: DappRadar

Off the Grid [Shooting]

Description: Off the Grid is a cyberpunk-themed royale battle game created by Gunzilla Games.

Chain: Avalanche

Investment: $101 million

Fact: Off the Grid has attracted over 1.1 billion dollars in financing and has a team of over 380 people. The game has partnered with Sony and Microsoft for release on PlayStation and Xbox, setting a new standard for the industry.

MapleStory Universe [Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game]

Description: MapleStory Universe extends Nexon's well-known MapleStory IP to a virtual world ecosystem, hosting a variety of applications based on this popular series.

Chain: A 'MapleStory' subnet supported by Avalanche

Investment: 1 billion US dollars

Fact: In 2023, MapleStory Universe received more than $100 million in financing from Nexon. "MapleStory Online" has accumulated more than 1 billion players and remains an important participant in the MMORPG field.

From July 24 to August 2, NEXPACE invited over 1,000 players to participate in the MapleStory N Pioneer Test. The peak number of players online reached 714, with 92% of participants returning multiple times during the testing period. The team reported a retention rate of 79.97% after seven days.

EVE Frontier [Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game]

Description: EVE Frontier is a single-server survival game set in a dark, dystopian space where humans strive to survive and rebuild the shattered world. In March 2023, CCP announced that it had raised $40 million for the development of the game.

Investment: 40 million US dollars

Fact: Leveraging mature intellectual property will provide users with significant advantages, enabling them to target the loyal fan bases of 'MapleStory' and Eve Online.

MetaCene [Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game]

Description: MetaCene is developing a blockchain-based MMORPG set in a hyper-realistic post-apocalyptic world. Players redefine civilization using various Non-fungible Tokens. The game aims to create an easily accessible Web3 experience, focusing on player-centric entertainment, governance, and AIGC-driven creativity.

Chain: Rangers, but Apostle Non-fungible Token is collected on the Ether chain

User Activity (UAW) (30 days): 38,320

Historical peak of user activity: 57,060 (March 25, 2024)

Fact: MetaCene was founded by gaming experts with over 20 years of industry experience, who come from companies such as Shanda Games, Blizzard, Perfect World, etc.

In the past 30 days, the user activity has risen from 898 to 37.1k, with a rise of +4,031.4%.

Avalon [Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game]

Description: Avalon is the world's first multi-chain, truly open-world massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), built using Unreal Engine 5 and incorporating multiple blockchains. The game is set in a fantasy medieval kingdom, and players use their Non-fungible Tokens to explore this world and compete for cryptocurrency and rare Non-fungible Token rewards. The game background is inspired by the legend of King Arthur and the alternate history of the Knights Templar.

Chain: ImmutableX, Base

Fact: Both MetaCene and Avalon are led by industry veterans who played a key role in shaping the MMORPG genre with 'Endless Mission' and 'Legend II'.

Big Time [Large-scale Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game]

Name: Big Time

Description: Big Time is a multiplayer action role-playing game (RPG) for PC, combining fast combat with an open game economy. Players actively generate and exchange in-game items. The game seamlessly integrates Web3 elements to ensure that these elements do not affect the entertainment experience, thus attracting a wider audience.

Chain: Ethereum

Fact: Big Time has revitalized the Web3 gaming market after the Bear Market, generating over $100 million in revenue since the qualifiers and positioning itself as a formidable Web3 native competitor.

Pirate Nation [完全on-chain game]

Description: Pirate Nation is an innovative game developed by Proof of Play, which combines game with blockchain technology. Players collect pirates and send them on adventures to collect crafting materials, treasures, and pirate coins. Pirates gain experience and level up through multiple adventures.

Chain: Ethereum, Apex Chain

Fact: Pirate Nation has experienced an astonishing 2,400% rise in just three months. This sharp increase, coupled with an impressive $1 million game revenue in the past six weeks, demonstrates its strong position in the field of FOCG (fully on-chain games).

Apex Chain aims to support the Pirate Nation ecosystem and is one of the most active chains, processing over 2.5 million transactions daily. This ranks it second in volume in the past month, just behind Base, among EVM Layer 2 solutions.

Infinigods [Mobile Game Studio]

Projects: Infinimerge, Immortal Siege, King of Destiny

Description: Infinigods is a Web3 game studio that focuses on providing cross-platform experiences for web and mobile platforms. Infinigods aims to build a casual gaming ecosystem that connects through its unique Non-fungible Token collection and intellectual property, all inspired by ancient mythology.

Chain: Ethereum

Fact: Infinigods' Web3 lucky battle game King of Destiny is quietly expanding its user base, with nearly 1 million downloads and over 250,000 monthly active users (MAU).

More games worth following:

• Capsule Heroes - Free PvP Boxing Game.
• Matr1x - an entertainment platform that combines Web3, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and esports, with over 24,000 unique Wallets in the past month.
• Fableborne is an isometric multiplayer online game with over 77,000 downloads.
• Treeverse - A large-scale multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Endless Clouds team.
• The World of Dypians (WoD) - A multiplayer online role-playing game, currently has 700,000 unique active Wallets in 30 days on DappRadar, ranking highest.

Source: DappRadar

According to Delphi, there are currently no clear signs in the market to indicate that games will be favored in the fourth quarter, despite the meme coin and Solana ecosystem surpassing most other Web3 areas. In addition, the products expected to be launched in the next six months will increase competition and may further disperse liquidity.

However, they remain hopeful that games such as Off The Grid, Maple Story Universe and Fableborne can have a positive impact on the sentiment of the Web3 and Web2 markets. Such content should still be seen as the best Trojan horse for Crypto Assets (i.e., a potential way to spread), and they believe there are optimistic reasons in the short to medium term.