Another crypto gaming studio bites the dust…

GAMING CHRONICLES 105

Raiden

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Memento

Feb 05, 2025

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TLDR :

Beamable raised $13.5M in a Series A
Midnight Society shuts down
Uprising and Somnia form Dream Catalyst

🗞️ NEWS

BEAMABLE RAISED $13.5M IN A SERIES A

Just yesterday, Beamable announced they raised $13.5M in a Series A led by BITKRAFT to support its DePIN for game backends and live services
- It’s a game server and liveops platform for both Web2/3 games
- Beamable aims to disrupt the way live games are supported, trying to break from their dependence on centralized data centers made by tech giants (e.g. AWS)
The Beamable Network will be managed by the Beamable Foundation, an entity that will open-source the company’s infrastructure and create a decentralized and tokenized protocol
- “An independent foundation ensures that the network’s development aligns with community interests rather than being dictated by a single corporation”
- Beamable will decentralize computing power, storage, and network bandwidth through Nodes. This means we can expect a sale in the (near) future
- This protocol will lessen the dependency of developers on bets they made using backend tech they didn’t create themselves. When a company such as GameSparks shut down, it took 2,000 games with them
The company has already grown its revenue to $3M across its clients and has the potential to be a top 10 DePIN project by revenue at launch (requiring a valuation of $600M)
- Carlos Pereira, a GP at BITKRAFT said:
  - “Its proven technology and built-in demand, combined with the disruptive potential of DePIN, represents an unparalleled opportunity to enable game developers – across Web2 and Web3 – to build, grow, and thrive at scale.”
Radoff, the founder of Beamable previously ran Disruptor Beam. A studio that made live-service games such as Star Trek: Timelines and Game of Thrones: Ascent.
- He sold the Startrek game and pivoted the company to Beamable in 2020
Over the past few years, John Radoff has been posting on his Substack about Web3 gaming, the metaverse, AI, etc., worth a scroll if you’re building anything in this space…

MIDNIGHT SOCIETY SHUTS DOWN

Unfortunately, another Web3 game studio bites the dust…
- And not just any studio, as it is Midnight Society, the makers of Deadrop (formerly associated with Dr. Disrespect)
Rich Cabrera, a former employee, said the studio wasn’t able to raise a follow-up round to finish the game, which was about 85% finished
- Many alternative options to fundraising were tried, even a buyout by the community. However, the studio was shut down before it could be put into action
- The board/investor owns the final build, which could be bought out or acquired, but Cabrera assumed that’d be difficult
As Dr. Disrespect was the face of the studio for so long, it became clear the game was going to have a hard time after they inevitably had to cut ties with him back in August 2024
- Back in September 2024, they also announced a significant workforce reduction
Over the past 3 years, the studio raised $11M+, which seems a lot but isn’t in the scheme of game development. A simple reminder of the incredibly high costs (and stakes) of this industry
- Sadly, there was a community token round happening last year, which included buying equity + token warrants. Seems like people who invested in that round lost their money…
- Plus, the multiple NFT sales the company held are now worthless
Seems like the category of extraction shooters isn’t doing too well recently, considering the former CEO of Shrapnel just jumped ship as well, moving to Unioverse
- Nobody can compete with Off the Grid at this point

UPRISING x SOMNIA AND DREAM CATALYST

Last week, Uprising and Somnia (by Improbable) announced a 6-month gaming accelerator program called Dream Catalyst
- For context, Uprising is a Web3 game publisher of existing Web2 games, and Somnia is an EVM L1 blockchain
  - Uprising published the naval warfare game Maelstrom and Strike Protocol so far
  - Improbable powered the Otherside experiences in the early days
The accelerator will be backed by a $10M grant from Somnia and includes:
- Mentorship and development, funding and deck reviews, on-demand classes, plus the program aims to grow the Somnia ecosystem
- Since the evolution from “metaverse builder” to L1 has been quite recent, it makes sense they launch these incentives to attract builders
  - Side note: Improbable has built similar tech to that of Meta Gravity, which recently announced a product called Spinor, “the distributed intelligent supercomputer for the next internet”
The founder of Somnia stated:
- “Partnering with Uprising Labs is an exciting step forward for Somnia’s mission to bring mass-consumer gaming fully on-chain”
In this landscape of so many gaming chains, multiple chain-developer incentive programs, and open Ronin, the pool of quality Web3 games is rapidly shrinking
- So, trying to attract games from the Web2 side might make sense here