More blows for Web3 gaming...

and

Sep 11, 2024

Gaming Chronicles focuses on curating the latest web3 gaming news, every week.

You will find the latest news, educational content, and game reviews.

Lizard Labs is a Web3 gaming community and portfolio sub-DAO, that produces interconnected gaming experiences.

This week they launched the Lizard Lounge App along with their airdrop campaign. Join the campaign using this link.

TLDR :

Moku announced they secured $5.35M in investment last Monday, led by Sky Mavis and A16Z Speedrun
- They share that Moku HQ’s goal is to create an ecosystem where the global community becomes a co-publisher
In the comment section (from the Angel investors), Jihoz mentions the following: “They're a key part of Ronin's distribution advantage.”
- Moku has been a key player in onboarding all the Ronin games that joined in the past year
- They created a questing platform to create a community-first approach to UA and distribution
  - By completing (in-game) quests, users receive currency, which they can use in the Moku Shop to buy raffle tickets and use the Gacha machine

The Midnight Society (MS) studio, working on Deadrop, announced a “significant workforce reduction”
- As we know, in the past months they have faced various challenges, the largest being Dr. Disrespect being detached from the project a couple of weeks ago
  - Arguably, MS lost a lot of its distribution advantage at that point
- Earlier this year in April, the studio expanded through new hires, attracting several employees on the environment and UI/UX team. This was announced in the Discord
Web3 gaming has been going through a rough patch recently, with problems, layoffs, and studios leaving left and right (e.g. Shrapnel lawsuit, Crypto Unicorns downscaling, Dimensionals leaving Web3, etc.)

To continue on the “rough patch of Web3 gaming”, The Grapes, just announced that “a passive, but passionate investor” bought the project
- With the acquisition, all the NFTs, the GRAPE token, social channels, and games (with some exceptions) are carried over. Additionally, it’s mentioned that “the acquiring party is resuming regular operations”
  - The development studio behind The Grapes, Viker Games, has been closed down according to Google as well
Grapes raised millions of dollars in Web3:
- $4.1M in a seed round in 2022
- Millions of $ during the token sale - the contract had $6M+ locked up in the smart contract during the raffle at its peak
- And “more than $100M was committed to $GRAPE”
My intuition screams this is a slow rug, but Jon Jordan provides a fair counter-argument, which comes down to:
- They were too successful at the time of the NFTs and the token sales, and they will never be able to go back to those peak prices with real economic activity. Therefore, a buyout was the best anyone could have hoped for
- Additionally, he suggests it might have been bought by Animoca, who was the lead investor
Overall, the focus seems to be on the GrapesPad (a token launchpad), and I don’t expect gaming will be a large part of the Grapes IP moving forward