Will the "$30M Tezos shooter" safe crypto gaming?

GAMING CHRONICLES 127

Raiden

and

Memento

Jul 09, 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 :

Reaper Actual comes out of stealth
GUNZ expands to Solana
Abstract expands in Korea

🗞️ NEWS

REAPER ACTUAL COMES OUT OF STEALTH

The big piece of news from last week was Reaper Actual’s (RA) official trailer release and debut, and so coming out of stealth
- RA is an open-world, persistent shooter, where players play as Reapers. These characters have bases, which they use to explore a large world controlled by AI factions (PVPVE)
- Players go on missions, kill others, collect loot, and bring it back to their base. Under certain circumstances, their bases can get raided too
  - “If Call of Duty: DMZ and Rainbow Six Siege had a baby, it would be our game set in an open world,”
    - From a high level, it also takes a lot of elements from Rust, like base building (and defense), PVPVE, a large map, and deep crafting systems
- Sam summarized a recent AMA from the studio, in which he shares more of the game mechanics + mentions that Web3 mechanics will be optional (bases can be NFTs as well)
RA is coming out of Distinct Possibility Studios, the company was founded by John Smedley, Michael Hunley, Tramell Isaac, and Tammy McDonald
- Smedley (CEO) is known for his work on H1Z1, EverQuest Next, and Planetside 2.
  - Smedley fell inspired during his time at H1Z1 when he saw players buy and sell items on the Steam Community Market. And in RA, players will be encouraged to mod and create new game modes, skins, etc.
- Hunley (CTO) worked on games for Zynga, Sony, and Amazon.
- Tramell Isaac (CAO) is most known for his artistic work at Fallout and Planetside 2.
- McDonald (CBO) still works at Griffin Gaming Partners and was the CEO of Axis Games Factory
- The game is being developed by a core team in San Diego and is co-developed with Big Moxi Games, a large LATAM studio. RA has been in development for two years (gameplay footage)
  - Apparently, they were at GDC as well 2 years ago
During its debut, the studio also announced a (new) funding round of $30.5M led by BITKRAFT and Brevan Howard Digital. With participation from Tezos, Hashed, Delphi, Shima, and others
- RA will launch on Tezos and Etherlink, aligning with the game’s future needs and vision of making Web3 optional
Overall, it’s been a while for crypto games since we’ve seen a raise of this size. Even though the money would have likely been raised in 2024

GUNZ EXPANDS TO SOLANA

In a surprise announcement, GUNZ expands to Solana. A strategic expansion of the $GUN token to amplify their multi-chain strategy
- The existing $GUN token on the GUNZ L1 on Avalanche will remain there, with an option to be bridged. Furthermore, GUNZ’s infrastructure will remain unchanged
- It remains unclear whether these changes affect the distribution schedule or the existing tokens’ supply
Other than the expansion, Gunzilla shared its vision and the “road ahead” in a recent article, covering that:
- New partnerships will be announced, the Steam launch is coming (as its June launch was delayed), the mainnet migration will continue, the OpenSea integration, among other things
  - Curious to see what OTG’s Steam version will look like, as I read trading will still be available
- The testnet → mainnet migration is likely taking longer due to the regulatory complexity of NFTs. For this reason, the team is working on VASP approvals, allowing the studio to manage player-owned assets safely
Daniel Droege listened to the Solana x Off the Grid space that came with the announcement. Here’s how he read between the lines of what was shared (from a devil’s advocate perspective):
- The team tried to distance the game from Avax
- The red chain was “low-key blamed” for the reason why players cannot earn yet, claiming Solana will allow them what Avax won’t
- Earning tokens will be the difference between Avax and Solana. And Daniel says this feels more like a pivot to Web2 for Avax and migration to Web3 to Solana
Simply listening to the recordings (so without Daniel’s bias), you sense some distance GUNZ tries to make between them and Avalanche
To be frank, it remains unclear how successful OTG is and whether the future of this game is sustainable. This expansion to Solana seems an attempt to (re) gain mindshare from the crypto market

TAINTED STUDIOS REVEALS V.O.I.D.

After silently popping up on our radar a couple of weeks ago, VOID has now started sharing more information about its upcoming game in a GamesBeat article
- VOID is a team-centric hero, horde survival game. Players survive based on wave-based hordes in 3vAI matches
- “Think Left 4 Dead meets Diablo, with deeply tragic champions, strategic item builds, and high-stakes PvE boss fights” (Daniel Paez, CEO)
  - Some bosses will drop items like raids in MMOs, which can be extracted if you win
The game takes a new approach to distribution as it will be gated through tokenized ERC-20 game licenses, allowing the community to resell, trade, and own the game distribution itself - “handing the keys to the players from day one”
- I’d be curious about the behavior or meta-game this mechanic creates. It’s a somewhat similar approach to Yuga Labs’ Dookie Dash, which initially gated access to the game through NFTs
  - The thesis is that WoM is the best way to sell a game, and fans become incentivized to push a game when they can sell it themselves. And this flywheel can be accelerated through creators
- The studio will monetize based on initial sales and game resales as “content scales with community interest” (more sales = more revenue = more content)
  - Future DLCs will require another token (or a fraction of one) to unlock access
  - Furthermore, there will be a free version available of VOID on Steam, but with limited content, serving as a demo
- It is mentioned that a Founder’s Edition pre-sale will be released soon
VOID is a game being developed by Tainted Studios, founded by Paez and Guilhaus, who have experience in both Web3 (Gods Unchained, Bigtime, and Guild of Guardians) and Web2 games (CoD, Diablo, Overwatch, and WoW)
The whitepaper mentions that the game will have an NFT integration for items and equipment
- Taking inspiration from WoW, to maintain a healthy economy, there will be three categories of assets: soulbound store items, tradeable items, and soulbound end-game items
Lastly, there will be 10M tokens in total, with 1 $VOID token = 1 full game license. Tokens will be distributed to investors, the community pre-sale, and community emissions
- Of course, selling millions of copies of your game is very ambitious, so I’m curious how different stakeholders will sell off their supply, and how it won’t become a race to undercut each other