The crypto and NFT gaming house is busier than ever recently, what with outstanding video games beginning to launch, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly fixed array of different issues taking place always. It’s so much to soak up!
Fortunately, Decrypt’s GG is throughout it. And for those who want a fast strategy to get caught up on the most recent strikes round crypto video video games, we’re pleased to current This Week in Crypto Video games.
Our weekend roundup serves up the most important information from the previous week-plus—that is an prolonged version as a result of holidays—together with a couple of different tidbits you may need missed.
Largest information
Hamster Kombat TON layer-2: After the fourth-largest gaming token launch of 2024, the makers of Telegram tap-to-earn sport Hamster Kombat revealed plans to create a layer-2 community on high of The Open Community (TON).
This got here after a decentralized autonomous group (DAO) vote overwhelmingly voted in favor of the transfer, with 1.1 billion HMSTR token voting energy in favor and simply 104,368 towards. Nevertheless, it is price noting that the high two voters maintain over 88% of all voting energy as of this writing, giving a few whales immense affect.
Previous to this, the devs introduced that Hamster Kombat’s hotly anticipated (and much-delayed) second season will likely be “greater than only a sport,” with three video games now within the works to turn into the core of an leisure ecosystem utilizing the IP. Referred to as HamsterVerse, a closed beta is already underway for 30,000 neighborhood members.
Off the Grid stands tall: As the top of the yr dawned, Avalanche-based shooter Off the Grid raked in some media accolades. Not solely did it win GG’s Sport of the 12 months, however the battle royale shooter additionally received Gam3s’ Sport of the 12 months award and made it to a Rolling Stone year-end gaming checklist.
Gunzilla Video games shared its 2025 plans with Decrypt alongside the GOTY honors. Most notably, this contains an estimated Q1 2025 date for its GUNZ community to enter mainnet, which might allow its GUN token to be freely traded. Earlier than then, the studio desires to launch ranked and solo queue modes, and open up the remaining 80% of the map whereas kicking off the sport’s storyline.
After that, Gunzilla will likely be trying to onboard third-party builders to the GUNZ community, and is even eying a doable Telegram mini app for the ecosystem. It must be a giant yr for one in all crypto gaming’s largest success tales to this point.
Illuvium’s subsequent steps: Crypto gaming franchise Illuvium introduced how will probably be transferring ahead within the new yr. The challenge beforehand launched three titles that fed into one another, each by way of shared assets and a story loop—however specializing in all three titles has been too difficult. Going ahead, the group will prioritize efforts on one sport at a time, beginning with the auto-battler Illuvium Enviornment.
The prolonged weblog publish additionally touches on plans to cut back microtransactions, add extra content material, and lift extra funding. Maybe most importantly, the publish ponders the potential for briefly shutting down the flagship title Illuvium Overworld till it’s a “absolutely realized expertise.” However coming into 2025, bettering the Overworld MMO expertise is claimed to be the Illuvium group’s “high precedence.”
ICYMI
Telegram sport Catizen distributed rewards to airdrop move holders on Friday, which noticed holders obtain three totally different tokens.
Iconic gaming model Atari revealed a brand new handheld console, the “My Arcade.”
Zoo, a surging Telegram sport with over 12 million gamers, confirmed that its mining part will finish on January 31 and that one in-game ZOO token will likely be equal to 1 future on-chain token.
Sonic SVM confirmed that gamers of its TikTok tap-to-earn sport will obtain a SONIC airdrop on the Solana blockchain.
Crypto buying and selling card sport Parallel crossed 6 million video games performed within the historical past of its existence, with builders claiming that it at present averages 200,000 video games every week.
Telegram sport Cat Gold Miner introduced that its token will likely be listed on Bitget, Gate, MEXC, and different exchanges on Thursday, January 9.
Somebody turned the long-lasting first-person shooter Doom right into a CAPTCHA human verification problem.
GG highlight
Listed below are a couple of of our authentic tales from this previous couple weeks that we predict are properly price a weekend learn:
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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