Tokyo Beast fails, but is this the end?

GAMING CHRONICLES 129

Raiden

and

Memento

Jul 24, 2025

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

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

TLDR :

Delabs raises $4.7M
Football.Fun raises $2M
Tokyo Beast is shutting down

🗞️ NEWS

DELABS RAISES

Delabs announced they raised a total of $17.2M this week, adding $5.2M to their to their total funding
- Last year in March, the studio raised another $4.7M, led by Hashed. This year, we’re seeing a similar set of participants across the board
In 2025, the company made a full pivot to focus its resources towards mid-core games on social apps (e.g., Telegram and LINE). Boxing Star X and Ragnarok Libre are their main titles, with another title TBA
- It seems the studio’s flagship title from last year, Rumble Racing Star, is on the back burner now. Furthermore, the development of their ARPG, Metabolts, is halted, and it seems unlikely it will continue its Web3 survival RPG Space Frontier
Boxing Star X is the Web3 adaptation of the original game, which accumulated 70M downloads before bridging over. The sports game is now the third-highest-grossing title on LINE (by revenue in $KAIA)
Ragnarok Libre is an idle RPG that uses the Ragnarok IP (owned by Gravity)
- The title was scheduled to launch on TON, but it recently announced it’s launching on LINE (KAIA). So, I am uncertain whether TON still has that exclusivity deal, or if it will launch on both platforms
- Interesting how we have ~5 (?) titles in crypto now that use the IP, including Ragnarok Landverse, Ragnarok: Monster World, and now Libre
Recently, Delabs announced a partnership with Verse 8, “a next-generation AI game maker and playground made by Planetarium Labs”. A platform similar to Remix GG that allows players to create hypercasual games using AI (demonstration)
- As part of this partnership, there are plans to launch various AI-created Web3 games, based on its portfolio of IPs, including Seven Guardians, Ghostbusters World, and DC Unchained
- The CEO of Planeterium, JC Kim, also joined as the co-CEO of Delabs
Lastly, Delabs has a strong presence in Korea and has been spending a lot on marketing there, including top-tier KOLs. Plus, the founder, Joon Mo Kwon, is beloved in the country as a well-known game developer
- With its TGE coming soon (presumably) and strong market sentiment coming out of Korea, we might see a good token launch

FOOTBALL.FUN RAISES $2M

Football Fun (FDF) announced they raised $2M in a round led by 6MV, with participation from Devmons, The Operating Group, Sfermion, and others
- Notably, 6MV participated in rounds including: Pump.Fun, ME, Etherscan, Photo Finish, Everseed, Aurory, Avalon, WilderWorld, and many more games and other crypto products
- The announcement mentioned: “…starting with the world’s most popular sport, football”. So, it seems likely they will expand to other sports if the formula proves itself
FDF's first playable version launched bootstrapped, with $250K raised through the founder, family, and friends
- Notably, they also took an approach contrary to most crypto game launches and came out of stealth when the game was playable
We reviewed FDF in our first product review, about 2.5 weeks ago, but here’s a quick refresher. FDF is a football fantasy platform where players are traded through tokens, instead of NFTs (like Sorare and NBA Top Shot do)
- A simplified version of how we understand crypto-enabled fantasy sports
- In the game, players buy players, manage their squad, earn currency based on performance, which they can use to buy new players
In a recent article by the CEO, Adam, “A game that wants sports fans to win”, FDF’s approach to this market is laid out:
- FDF creates a smarter, more sustainable fantasy sports model, designed to reward fans first. They decided to use a different approach to licensing (using only the players’ names), allowing them to have much better margins, which allows them to increase player rewards
- It simplifies the format by having one format, no rarities, and everyone playing the same game
  - Sorare, for instance, uses different Leagues, which in the higher ones require rarer cards to participate
- The entry costs (to participate for rewards) are lower, as you don’t need to assemble a Squad of NFTs, but can buy any amount of tokens of a player
- Lastly, it mentions that the FDF Marketplace is coming soon, plus they’ll roll out a reputation score system soon for holding crypto assets
The past months for FDF have been about beta testing, and the pro-platform is rolling out in August (coinciding with the start of the football league)
- The pro version will introduce the FDF pack reveal, a booster pack opening that grants you 500 shares of a randomized player
Looking forward to the official launch and trajectory of this app

TOKYO BEAST IS SHUTTING DOWN

As a surprise to many, Tokyo Beast announced it will officially terminate its service on August 24, less than three months after its official launch…
- The reason being: “difficulty of balancing operational costs, and after extensive discussions with our stakeholders, we have arrived at the painful decision to terminate the service"
  - Presumably, the game couldn’t scale profitably, so they decided to pull the plug. Also, hearing that the game spent quite heavily on its marketing campaign pre- and post-TGE
- Yet, this isn’t the end of TGT (its token) and the Tokyo Games Foundation. Even though its flagship couldn’t deliver, “progress is already underway for titles beyond the second installment”
  - The TGT token is now down to a sub-$1M market cap. About 97% down from the valuation it launched at, on May 21st. Recovering from that is an uphill battle
  - The studio behind the game raised ~$12.5M in total. Its second seed round of $7.15M was announced this February
Surprisingly, Tokyo Beast has introduced a fair compensation policy for its holders, a total of $350K (distributed in USDC), across NFT Holders, token stakers, and buyers of in-game purchases
- Players can also request a refund for their IAPs (on Apple), which seems to work
The news of the termination of the game was a shock, because of the game’s (perceived) success from the launch:
- No. 1 in the App Store in Japan (category: Top Free Games), 300K downloads and $1M in revenue (not in 48 hours as initially communicated, but across its Early Access and its launch)
  - But once again, we are reminded of how easily a small audience of 10,000 crypto gamers can place a game this high on the mobile charts
    - We’ve seen this happen multiple times now (e.g. Heroes of Mavia), and I am still surprised it still has such a high “marketing value”, as it doesn’t tell much about the game’s success in the end
Tokyo Beast also used a revenue-sharing mechanic that rewarded holders of Beast NFTs in TGT through the performance of Proxy Beasts, staking, and betting systems
- The gacha model was a core component of this mechanic. It consumed Rawdisk NFTs and TGT, and in return, players received Beast NFTs or Proxy Beasts
  - This mechanic might have hurt their monetization, but I’d assume it was more about scaling profitably beyond crypto
Overall, it’s sad to see another game fail in this space, yet there might be some hope for their second game…