Oasys Launches Ecosystem Fund to Drive Mass Adoption of Blockchain Gaming

Oasys, a gaming-optimised blockchain built by gamers for gamers, has announced the launch of the Oasys Ecosystem Fund, a pioneering initiative that aims to enable new entrants to the burgeoning blockchain gaming space to better serve the market and drive mass adoption. As the blockchain gaming industry continues to experience rapid growth, Oasys will look to incubate and invest in a range of gaming projects that are built on or synergistic with its network.

The Oasys Ecosystem Fund will prioritise early-stage projects that are focused on building out the ecosystem, including gaming decentralised applications, infrastructure, liquidity venues, and studios. It will invest in a variety of digital assets, including but not limited to equity, debt, and token instruments. Oasys has a grant programme that provides OAS tokens to projects that meet certain criteria, but these tokens are typically only used for marketing purposes. The Fund will provide financial support and drive the operation and growth of emerging projects.

To accelerate time to market and reduce costs, the start-ups that receive funding through the Oasys Ecosystem Fund will not only receive capital, but will also have access to the knowledge network and expertise of the Oasys team, as well as Oasys' partner network, including internationally renowned gaming investor Galaxy Interactive.

Galaxy Interactive participated in Oasys' strategic funding round that was completed last month, alongside South Korean gaming giant Nexon, the company behind the wildly popular gaming franchise MapleStory.

Daiki Moriyama, Director, Oasys, said: "We've seen the staggering growth and resilience of the blockchain gaming industry over the past year, but we also recognise that recent developments in the adjacent crypto space have inevitably created uncertainty. With the launch of our Ecosystem Fund, we want to offer the best emerging projects the opportunity to continue building and scaling. We remain steadfast in our vision to bring blockchain gaming to the masses."

Following the launch of the Ecosystem Fund, Oasys will explore setting up a second fund.

Oasys has garnered support from some of the biggest names in the industry, including Bandai Namco Research, SEGA, Ubisoft, Netmarble, WeMade, Com2uS and Yield Guild Games. With such strong institutional backing, Oasys remains laser-focused on expanding its ecosystem and is committed to shaping the next generation of gaming in a Web3 world.

Atmos Labs Completes $11M Seed Round to Power the Evolution of Metaverse-Native Sports

Play-and-earn metaverse developer Atmos Labs, Inc. announces the close of an $11 million seed round for Atmos, a competition-based virtual world set in an expansive sci-fi universe and built to accelerate the advent of metaverse-native sports. Sfermion led the round, which included prominent investors Animoca Brands, Collab+Currency, FBG Capital, Alumni Ventures, RedBeard Ventures, DWeb3, LD Capital, GSR Markets Limited, CoinGecko Ventures, Avocado Guild, UniX Gaming, and more. The funding will be used to build the foundation of the virtual game world of Atmos, grow its community, and expand the Atmos team.

To date, competitive sports in virtual environments have enjoyed limited global adoption and have failed to definitively counter criticism from skeptics, such as doubts about the legitimacy of viewership and exclusive definitions of the term "sport". However, with the advent of virtual reality spaces powered by blockchain technology, DeFi, and NFTs — the "metaverse" — legacy notions of gaming and sports stand to be upended, putting the gamer and even the spectator at the center of the ecosystem.

Atmos, a new play-and-earn metaverse, is building an immersive experience that will pair an esports component with the fandom and sense of belonging that come with conventional sports in a new virtual universe. With the goal of igniting the category of metaverse-native sports, the game and its story are built by experienced veterans from the fields of gaming, crypto, automotive, industrial design, comic books, film, and more. Through NFTs, DeFi, and the principles of the emerging metaverse, Atmos players will not only play, but actually own their gear, teams, identities, and moments.

For Atmos Labs’ Founder and CEO Kevin Beauregard, Atmos is the next evolution of gaming. "People are going to congregate around the spectacle of competition in the metaverse just like they do in the physical world. We are building metaverse-native sports and entertainment — a category we believe will bring excitement and substance to the metaverse concept writ large."

"Atmos is delivering a refreshing blend of stunning aesthetics, competition, and a real digital economy, all while maintaining that commitment to true ownership of in-world assets," said Andrew Steinwold, managing partner of co-lead investor Sfermion. "The Atmos Labs founding team has brought together an incredibly talented group that one would expect for a company many times its age, from game design and mechanics to creative development."

Atmos Labs’ VP of Game Design, Dylan Bushnell, added, "We’re committed to building a world in which players can generate value from gameplay, own and trade interoperable assets in non-exclusive marketplaces, and govern the ecosystems they helped create. Importantly, all blockchain-related integrations aside, the games we’re developing could stand on their own."

Over the coming months, Atmos will launch a transmedia campaign to outline and explore canonical lore and drop an initial lot of playable items.

About Atmos

Atmos is an upcoming expansive, play-and-earn metaverse experience with strong economics, deep lore, and high-octane gameplay. Join Atmos to compete in a variety of game modes, fabricate unique pieces of equipment, and mine and smelt new resources. Built by a team of technologists, entrepreneurs, community builders, design experts, and gaming fanatics, Atmos is more than just a game you play — it’s a world you own. Mine for Riches. Compete for Glory. Build Forever.

Learn more: https://atmos.xyz

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AtmosXYZ

Join Discord: https://discord.gg/AtmosXYZ

NFT publisher Concept Art House announces partnership with upcoming Planet Mojo Auto Chess game

NFT publisher Concept Art House will design 3D characters for an upcoming Planet Mojo game

Mystic Moose, an independent game developer creating the web3 Metaverse Planet Mojo, has partnered with Concept Art House (CAH), a leading publisher for some of the world's most recognizable NFTs and video game art.

Working alongside Planet Mojo's art team, CAH is creating 3D character models of Planet Mojo's Champions — warriors that will appear in the upcoming auto chess game, Mojo Melee. Most of Planet Mojo's inhabitants are fantastical anthropomorphic plant-like creatures that make up the planet's various clans.

Planet Mojo is in the midst of its first NFT pre-mint contest where fans have a chance to mint one-of-a-kind 3D Mojos, magical plant-based creatures that must soon fend off a deadly threat to save their planet. Owners who mint and hold their Mojos will be airdropped four Champions needed to play Planet Mojo's forthcoming games and be able to unlock many other perks.

"Mystic Moose is thrilled to bring the art talent and blockchain expertise of Concept Art House to Planet Mojo. We first met at LucasArts back in the day and have many mutual connections and friends. This feels like a natural fit! I'm excited that our teams will be working together to create important characters for Planet Mojo," said Mike Levine, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Mystic Moose.

"Mike and the Mystic Moose team are an up-and-coming force in the web3 gaming community, and we are proud to play a role in this exciting project and drive the ecosystem forward," said James Zhang, CEO of Concept Art House.

Planet Mojo's NFT sale through Polkastarter will begin on June 1, 2022. In addition, Planet Mojo's own pre-mint sale will end on June 2, with winners announced the following day. Minting will start on June 6.

About Concept Art House
Since 2007, Concept Art House (CAH) has provided art and support for many of the top gaming and entertainment companies in the world. It has shipped over 1,000 games and collectibles with the world's most influential brands. With those deep roots in gaming, including franchises such as ROBLOX and Fortnite, CAH has evolved to focus solely on NFTs and has successfully pivoted to play a major role in the creation of web3 and the metaverse ecosystem. To that end, CAH has created NFTs for Frank Miller's Sin City, UFC, the International Olympics Committee (IOC), the NFL, and Gucci. CAH is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Shanghai and Chengdu. Its partners and investors include Dapper Labs, Gala Games, and Animoca Brands.

Website: www.conceptarthouse.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/conceptarthouse
Instagram: www.instagram.com/conceptarthouse
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Conceptarthouse

About Mystic Moose and Planet Mojo
Mystic Moose is a decentralized independent development studio comprised of game industry veterans from LucasArts, EA, Activision, and HappyGiant. The company is backed by industry leaders, including Animoca Brands, Courtside Ventures, Republic, Sfermion, and Alameda. Mystic Moose is headquartered in moose-filled Conway, MA.

Planet Mojo is a blockchain gaming metaverse being built by Mystic Moose. Set inside a rich, mysterious alien world, players will compete with their NFT-owned customized teams in a suite of player versus player (PvP), play-to-earn games and esports tournaments, including a debut auto chess title. https://www.planetmojo.io

Website: www.planetmojo.io 
Twitter: www.twitter.com/WeArePlanetMojo 
Discord: www.discord.com/invite/PlanetMojo 
Telegram: www.t.me/planetmojochat 
Medium: www.medium.com/planet-mojo-blog

Magic: The Gathering" Designer, Richard Garfield, Partners with WAX Studios to Deliver PvP Gaming Mode for Blockchain Brawlers

WAX Studios, a gaming and blockchain services studio created by the founders of the WAX Blockchain, has partnered with Magic: the Gathering creator Richard Garfield to create a player-versus-player (PvP) gaming experience within WAX Studios' highly successful play-to-earn (P2E) non-fungible token (NFT) game, Blockchain Brawlers.

The partnership will deliver a new PvP layer within WAX Studios' Blockchain Brawlers game, which was released to major fanfare earlier this month. In the first two weeks of launch alone, the game's native token, BRWL, garnered over $431 Million in volume.

Blockchain Brawlers is the first game from WAX Studios, with its gaming initiatives led by Chief Gaming Officer Michael Rubinelli. Rubinelli, a 25-year veteran of the gaming industry, who is cited as being instrumental in the rise of the free-to-play business model that revolutionized gaming.

Into the mix now comes Richard Garfield, a mathematics professor and a game designer whose most successful game, Magic: The Gathering, is credited with ushering in the trading card game genre. WAX Studios's unique take on Web3 gaming is to combine P2E monetization with the PvP gameplay, alongside the creativity and desirability of Garfield's game design genius.

Richard Garfield, inventor and game designer, said: "It's a pleasure to bring a PvP element to Blockchain Brawlers. I am aiming for a game that is entertaining and immersive with real strategic choices and opportunity for risk taking — yet easy enough to learn that it opens up Blockchain Brawlers to a broad player audience."

Michael Rubinelli, CGO of WAX Studios, said: "We set up WAX Studios because we feel Web3 gaming is in urgent need of redefinition. Right now, it's more about farming than having fun. Bringing in Richard Garfield and his beautiful, mathematical, and strategy-driven mind to the creative team behind our new PvP layer will boost Blockchain Brawlers to entirely new levels and raise the bar on Web3 gaming."

Within Blockchain Brawlers, players compete in pro-wrestling style matches, earn BRWL tokens, and craft their way to success. Players can use their earnings to construct better equipment, including wrestling rings and weapons, to earn more BRWL.

WAX Studios has stellar ambitions for Brawlers and is aiming to maximize participation by attracting mainstream gamers to its web3 games. The team says it wants as many people to go head-to-head as possible to create excitement and a variety of opponents. There are also plans to develop secondary market opportunities to ensure users have a solid outlet for crafted items, generally lacking in other P2E games.

Through its carbon-neutral blockchain, WAX is fast becoming a powerhouse in the Play-to-Earn and non-fungible token (NFT) gaming sector. The WAX blockchain currently has over 12,000,000 active user accounts and boasts five blockchain games in the top 25 by users, including the actual top 3. WAX also cites the most activity, with nearly 20 million daily operations according to Blocktivity.

WAX has also had tremendous success onboarding major IPs into early Web3. At the start of 2022, WAX performed the largest NFT drop in history — one to each of the first 10 million accounts registered.

About Blockchain Brawlers
Created by WAX Game Studios, Blockchain Brawlers is the rowdiest play-to-earn game in metaverse history, featuring a hilarious and entertaining cast of NFT characters. Powered by BRWL tokens, each Brawler NFT plays an integral role in the Blockchain Brawlers play-to-earn game as players brawl, earn, and craft their way to fame and fortune.

About WAX - The King of NFTs
The Worldwide Asset eXchange™ (WAX), aka the King of NFTs, is the world's #1 blockchain, as measured by number of users and transactions, according to Dappradar.com. WAX's mission is to bring NFTs to the mass market in the safest, most secure, environmentally friendly, and easy-to-use marketplace in the world. WAX is also the leading entertainment NFT network — in 2018, WAX introduced vIRLs®, giving consumer product companies the ability to directly link NFTs to physical consumer products. Co-founded in 2017 by William E. Quigley and Jonathan Yantis, WAX has facilitated the trade of more than 100 million digital collectables including Mattel, Hasbro, Major League Baseball (via Topps MLB collectables), Funko Digital POP!, Capcom's "Street Fighter," World Series of Poker and world-renowned entertainers Deadmau5 and Weezer. WAX is also the leading play-to-earn games and entertainment NFT network in the metaverse and is home to many of the leading blockchain games including Alien Worlds, Splinterlands, Farmers World and Farming Tales. For more information, please visit https://wax.io and follow along on Twitter and Discord.

Kongregate Announces The Bitverse, An 8-Bit Metaverse

Kongregate, creators of the massively popular web gaming platform Kongregate.com and a pioneering blockchain game developer, today revealed the Bitverse, a soon-to-launch collection of web3 games set in a nostalgic 8-bit universe. Each game in the Bitverse will have different game mechanics and gameplay styles but will live within the same game universe - or metaverse. To start, the Bitverse will consist of three games: Bit Heroes - a Kongregate fan-favorite cross platform mmorpg, Bit Heroes Arena - a battle royale shooter currently in open beta, and a third game currently in development planned to launch later this year.

The Bitverse will feature a unique combination of fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for players to collect and earn, rewarding their engagement with the metaverse. Players will be able to play as their "hero" or avatar across games as a non-fungible token (NFT), but each game will also be playable as a stand alone title for those that don’t want to engage in the Bitverse’s deeper lore and gameplay. The first set of unique one-of-one avatars will be available for presale in Q2 2022. More information about how the NFT avatars and token economies will work across games is available in the official Bitverse whitepaper at www.thebitverse.io.

“The long term goal of the Bitverse is to create a metaverse of cross platform games united by the blockchain, with an NFT ‘bit hero’ that players can use in every game,” said Jorge G. Ezquerra, Senior Director of Product at Kongregate. “These games will use a hybrid of traditional gaming and blockchain technology to allow players to own digital assets, engage with developers directly and influence future game development. With Bit Heroes' retro vibes, our intention is to create a sense of nostalgia by returning to what Kongregate does best - bringing a community of gamers and developers together to create games with each other.”

In addition to the already popular Bit Heroes MMORPG, Kongregate plans to release Bit Heroes Arena in Q3 of this year. Bit Heroes Arena, currently in open beta, is a survival battle royale where players combat monsters and each other in a fantasy world. Additionally, Kongregate plans to develop and release more games in the Bitverse universe based on player feedback, one of which is currently in development and is slated to launch later this year.

Bitverse games will be available across platforms later this year. Stay up to date with Kongregate’s Bitverse roadmap by joining the Discord and visiting www.thebitverse.io.

Info: https://blog.kongregate.com/kongregate-announces-the-bitverse-a-collection-of-interconnected-web3-games-set-in-an-8-bit-metaverse/

Adult industry NFT pioneers Pleasure Network and their PleasureLand metaverse are proud to be sponsors of CGC X (April 28th & 29th 2022)

Adult industry NFT pioneers Pleasure Network and their PleasureLand metaverse are proud to be sponsors of CGC X (April 28th & 29th 2022)

Next Gen meets Sex Gen.

PleasureLand is an upcoming metaverse project developed by adult industry futurists Pleasure Network and overseen by experienced sex positive professionals, PleasureLand is the first metaverse truly created for an interactive adult experience.

Being a community and creator focused metaverse platform, PleasureLand is proud to be a sponsor of CGC X, the tenth edition of the leading blockchain games conference. Taking place on April 28-29, 2022 the team looks forward to two full days of priceless content and networking with over 3,500 delegates.

“At Pleasure Network our vision is to build a safe place for adult performers and sex positive workers to interact with fans, voyeurs, pleasure seekers and everything in between (the sheets). We deeply respect the CGC’s team dedication to growing decentralized spaces as well as their openness to include our project in the list of emergent companies changing the landscape of interactive experiences on the blockchain” – Liv, Head of Operations, Pleasure Network

Pleasure Network is not new to integrating blockchain into the sex positive space and are the minds behind the largest and most trusted adult NFT marketplace PleasureNifty (formally XXXNifty). The team believes in the power of blockchain to transform the adult industry and is building on the premier Layer-2 on the Ethereum blockchain (Polygon). The currency behind their ecosystem, Pleasure Coin ($NSFW), is one of the fastest growing tokens on Polygon. With listings on exchanges like HitBTC with additional listings to follow very soon, Pleasure Coin is poised for exponential growth in 2022.

By partnering with experienced influencers and leading companies in the decentralized tech community, Pleasure Network is looking to create an adult metaverse that is open to all who accept an inclusive and safe adult ecosystem for the future. Participating at events like CGC X will help to grow the PleasureLand vision as well as awareness of the need for safe adult content in the Web 3.0 landscape.

The PleasureLand project is already well underway with Pink Pass NFT access tokens already sold out (available on OpenSea) and Pink Dolls ready to mint in early Q2 2022. https://www.pleasureland.com/

Recent Company AMA: https://youtu.be/FsCG9EDaZFY

Dr Disrespect's Midnight Society partners with Stardust to mint nearly 400,000 NFTs in under 17 Hours

Stardust, a seamless solution for game developers integrating NFTs into their immersive games, and Midnight Society, the new game studio launched by Twitch streaming legend Dr Disrespect, today announced that they minted nearly 400,000 of their Claw Series 0 Patch NFTs in under 17 hours, a record-setting achievement made possible by Stardust's industry-leading technology.

"Stardust is built to bring the utility of tokenized assets at scale to the world of gaming in a manner that is both cost-effective and volume ready," said Stardust CEO, Canaan Linder. "Minting 25k NFTs per hour is a staggering pace that not only proves the efficacy and scalability of our technology, but also our team's innovation, market-responsiveness, and ability to support our customer's needs."

The next mint of NFTs for Midnight Society, for which 400k applications have already been submitted, is for a chance to purchase the Founders Access Pass. Committed to building a unique, gamer-first community, only 10,000 people will have the opportunity to mint a Founders Access Pass NFT.

"We have a massive vision for how games are going to be built in the future, bringing players into the fold in ways that have never been done before while keeping core gameplay loops off the blockchain," said Midnight Society Co-Founder and Creative Director, Quinn DelHoyo. "This hybrid approach required every feature that Stardust's solution offers and the flexibility to give our players the choice on if, when, and how they interact with the NFTs in our community. It's this freedom of choice that allows us to get the benefits Web3 has to offer while also leveraging the successful gaming models of the past in unison."

Founders Pass NFTs do not provide any in-game benefits and yet are an exceptionally hot commodity. Among the most notable perks for players is access to early game builds before they are publicly playable, and dev roundtables during which they can weigh in on aspects of the game while it is being developed. In this way, Midnight Society is rewarding their community with a truly exclusive experience. In addition, each NFT will be an individual entity that players own and can sell on open marketplaces.

While many people mistakenly associate NFTs as only a means of monetization, Midnight Society is leveraging them to foster an engaged community whose members contribute their input and opinions, supporting the game's launch and evolution. Midnight Society is proactively taking steps to weed out individuals whose sole intention is to profit from NFT flipping.

"From day one, both teams knew this project was destined for success by virtue of our companies' shared commitment to a community-first approach," said Stardust COO, Atif Khan. "For Stardust, partnering with some of the industry's foremost purists aligns with our mission to ensure that the addition of NFTs into games enhance the player experience while maintaining a truly authentic experience."

About Stardust  

Stardust powers the metaverse by making it possible for game developers to enable NFTs in their games with a blockchain-free API.  Enabling game developers to build on blockchain via their effortless back-end solution, Stardust provides a seamless ecosystem for game publishers to build and scale metaverse-ready games. From a growing list of blockchain options to provisioned player-wallets using Fireblocks and a built-in NFT marketplace, Stardust is paving the path for the play-to-earn revolution.  
Website | Twitter

About Midnight Society

Midnight Society is a new kind of AAA game studio and publishing model over a decade in the making. We turn the tables upside down by including our Day Zero community and professional gamers much earlier in the development process. We are a group of ambitious game industry veterans who see a future in which developers no longer create experiences in a vacuum and players share in a game's success.
Website | Twitter | discord

Archieverse: Eclipse’ NFT collection from Palm allows communities to co-create the next chapter of their favorite Archie characters.

For over 80 years, Archie Comics has shaped youth culture and fan communities. Now, generations of Archie stories are creating the foundation for a new chapter: one that’s co-created by fans. On May 16th’s Blood Moon, Archie Comics will drop the Archieverse: Eclipse collection: a PFP project inspired by The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Priced at $66.66 each and created by Archie Comics, Palm NFT Studio and Archie artists Laura Braga and Vincezo Federici, Archieverse: Eclipse spans 66,666 generative characters and 3,000,000,000 outcomes linked by an ominous prophecy. What happens next is up to fans.

Marking a major milestone in comic book history, Archie Comics is leveraging the blockchain to empower fans to author future series; incorporating fan-generated art and stories into the Archieverse, and directly rewarding contributors for their creativity. Archiverse: Eclipse collectors will be able to create and submit new storylines for their characters; with the opportunity to see their work become canon. The creators of selected submissions will be granted story credits and more from future comic series integration.

For Archie Comics, generative storytelling is empowering a future co-created with fans around the world; a blockchain-based writer’s room that makes participation in the series radically accessible. This approach to community-driven innovation is a natural step in the evolution of a brand that’s transformed representation by introducing one of comic’s first gay characters, and shifted the landscape of TV with Riverdale.

Archie CEO Jon Goldwater says, “Archie Comics has been a beloved part of millions of households around the world for over 80 years. We began our life as a comics publisher and brought the world a cast of characters and storylines that readers of all ages could relate to, taking care to be inclusive as the world grew and changed around us. When we launched Archie Horror in 2015, we paved the way for our evolution from a premier publisher to a world class entertainment brand when we brought the world to Riverdale through six seasons so far. As we watched the emergence of this exciting new technology, and a new fandom growing around it, we knew we had to find the right partner and platform to introduce Archie 3.0; with the same care and consistency that we have established in everything we do. We cannot wait to introduce the gang to a whole new audience in a whole new way.”

To bring comic IP into Web3, Archie Comics chose Palm NFT Studio because of their proven track record of fostering Web3 creativity, mechanics, and economics, and their commitment to brand safety, an essential when working with large-scale IP and fan co-creation.

“I remember getting Archie Comics from the grocery store check out aisle as a kid, and now we’re launching a collective storytelling project so ambitious it will set a new precedent for comic books,” said Co-Founder and CEO of Palm NFT Studio Dan Heyman. “Helping brands like Archie Comics sustainably unlock the potential of Web3 is exactly why we created Palm NFT Studio, and I want to thank everyone on our creative and development teams who worked so hard to make this next step in the evolution of community-driven collectibles possible.”

From eight decades of history, Archie is writing a Web3 future with fans. Will communities be able to crack the prophecy contained in the Archieverse: Eclipse NFTs? What stories will emerge to shape and shift the Archieverse? And how can fan co-creation move comic culture forward? The answers to these questions begin on May 16.

To mint your “Archieverse: Eclipse” NFT and join the Archieverse community, visit https://archiecomics.com/nft/ and the Archie Comics’ Discord channel.

Animoca Brands acquires Eden Games to build out the future of their blockchain racing games

Animoca Brands, the company advancing digital property rights for gaming and the metaverse, announced it has completed the acquisition of 100% of the issued capital of Eden Games S.A.S. from Engine Gaming & Media.

Eden Games is a highly respected and successful racing game studio with products ranging from pure racing to open-world and management racing games.

Eden Games was founded in 1998 and is based in France. The company has strong experience in developing award-winning racing games across the mobile, console and PC platforms, including Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, F1® Mobile Racing, and the franchises Gear.Club, Test Drive, and V-Rally. Eden Games has over 13 million game boxes sold and over 60 millions app downloads worldwide

In March, at Apple Inc.’s Peek Performance event, Apple announced Eden Games’ latest expansion of the Gear.Club franchise, Gear.Club Stradale, as the “next big release” coming exclusively to Apple Arcade.

Gear.Club is a hyper-realistic racing simulator and served as the primary racing game for the open qualifiers of World’s Fastest Gamer, a first-of-its-kind competition that transits motorsport gamers into real-world champions.

Eden Games also has long term partnerships with more than 30 established brands in the automotive industry, including BMW, Bugatti, Porsche, Lotus, Pagani, and many others.

Animoca Brands will leverage the expertise and capabilities of Eden Games to work on existing and new titles in the REVV Motorsport ecosystem and to bring to market a series of new blockchain-based racing games. The new games will provide additional utility to the NFT Race Passes and the other assets obtained by swapping assets from Animoca Brands’ F1® Delta Time, which ceased operations in March 2022.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented:

“With its quarter of a century of expertise in building high-quality motorsport video games, Eden Games will enhance and accelerate the development of the REVV Motorsport ecosystem and add powerful value to the REVV community and the racing metaverse.”

David Nadal, co-founder and head of studio of Eden Games, said:

“We are excited to start the next chapter of Eden Games by joining Animoca Brands. We look forward to producing new experiences that challenge the status quo within the motorsport genre and venture into new frontiers such as Web3 alongside a leader in the space.”

About Edem Games

Eden Games was founded in Lyon, France, in 1998, to develop one of the most successful game franchises on PlayStation systems: V-Rally. Eden Games is an independent game studio managed by two of its original co-founders, David Nadal and Jean-Yves Geffroy. The studio is composed of both experienced veterans and highly talented young developers, all driven by the same passion for cars, high-end design, and technology.

Website ♦ Twitter 

About Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands, a Deloitte Tech Fast winner and ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification that is working to advance digital property rights.

Website ♦ Twitter 

Still on that post-Mania hype? Check out the latest updates from my favorite blockchain Pro Wrestling project, Wrestling Metaverse

If you are still hyped after Wrestlemania I have the perfect blockchain gaming project for you in Wrestling Metaverse. https://www.wrestlingmetaverse.com/

First next generation combat sport game powered by blockchain technology.

Wrestling Metaverse is the world’s first community owned Immersive, and endlessly fun wrestling video game- Created for fans, by fans.

“Our mission is to be the digital home for all combat sports fans and athletes. Starting with Professional Wrestling as our first entry point, we will bring sports combat games into the new digital age in which in-game asset ownership; community-led governance; and multiplayer experiences matter the most.”

Serenity Games and Serenity Technologies are new studios focused on building games that bring together the best of MMO RPGs and traditional fighting games

https://medium.com/wrestling-metaverse/wrestling-metaverse-update-3-f8843066129b

FTX Acquires Storybook Brawl Developer Good Luck Games

West Realm Shires, Inc., the owner of FTX US, a leading U.S.-regulated cryptocurrency company, today announced that they have acquired Olympia, Wash.-based developer, Good Luck Games, creator of the popular upcoming card auto battle game Storybook Brawl. Following the acquisition, Good Luck Games will be integrated into FTX Gaming.

“We couldn’t stop playing Storybook Brawl when it became available on Early Access in Steam last summer,” commented Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX. “Outside of it being an incredibly fun game our whole office enjoys, with its highly engaging gameplay and free-to-play model, we saw an opportunity to be the vanguard for the ethical integration of gaming and crypto transactions in a way that hasn’t yet been done in this space.”

Developed by a team of veteran designers from Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone and Elder Scrolls Legends, Storybook Brawl is a lighthearted card-based autobattler game featuring characters from beloved fairy tales and myths. While the game is easy to jump into and simple to play, its wide variety of cards offers opportunities for deep strategy and accommodates different play styles. Although still in open beta, the game has amassed thousands of Very Positive reviews on the Steam platform.

“As we build our team of outstanding artists at GL Games, we wanted to develop ways for both the artists and players to benefit from and feel ownership in the success of the game,” says GL Games CEO Matthew Place. “We found that FTX has a similar mindset in creating the model for digital object ownership done right.”

Storybook Brawl will be featured in the FTX booth at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The game is currently in Early Access on Steam with the mobile version expected to launch this summer.

FTX Gaming will focus on integrating environmentally friendly blockchain technologies as part of FTX’s larger focus on climate and carbon neutrality. To learn more about FTX Climate and FTX’s commitment to carbon neutrality, please visit: https://www.ftx-climate.com/

About Good Luck Games

Founded in 2019, GL Games is helmed by four veteran card game designers and former professional players. Magic: The Gathering Hall of Famer Josh Utter-Leyton and top player Matthew Nass both worked on Elder Scrolls: Legends and Eternal. Magic: The Gathering Hall of Famer Luis Scott-Vargas (commonly known as LSV) has worked at Dire Wolf Digital as well as on numerous other digital and physical games, and is a founder of ChannelFireball.com, one of the premiere Magic websites and event companies. Matthew Place is a Magic Pro Tour champion turned game designer. He's had many roles during his 18 years in the game industry, including lead initial designer for Hearthstone at Blizzard Entertainment. www.storybookbrawl.com

About FTX Gaming

FTX Gaming is the gaming division of leading global crypto companies, FTX & FTX US, established to help developers create open economy games that players will love for decades. We do that by leveraging FTX’s fullstack of technology and blockchain expertise to safely, compliantly, and seamlessly offer players low friction ways to take ownership of their digital assets.

To learn more about FTX Gaming, please visit: https://ftx.com/

Phantasma to attend GDC and showcase several of the games on their Layer 1 Smart NFT Ecosystem.

The Phantasma team will be attending GDC 2022 to work on increasing adoption, and introducing game developers to the power of Phantasma’s Layer 1 Smart NFT Ecosystem. With nearly 30,000 gamers and game industry professionals in attendance the team will be introducing a new group to blockchain gaming and of course giving out swag at their booth (N3026)

To promote projects on Phantasma the team will have game-access NFTs from at least three new games being released that week on their platform. Their partners at Ghost Festival and Wildcard have both committed to launching the first game play of each game at GDC.

Wemade is heading to GDC to introduce the global blockchain platform, WEMIX

Wemade is heading to San Francisco to participate in the world’s largest developers conference, GDC (Game Developers Conference). It is planning to introduce the global blockchain platform, WEMIX, to developers around the world.

Wemade is participating in GDC 2022 as a Diamond partner along with Meta, AWS, Intel, Microsoft, and Unity Technologies.

At the booth, a cinematic video of Wemade’s mother ship will be played through a large screen and Wemade will introduce the WEMIX platform to developers at GDC. Developers will also get a chance to have various business meetings about P&E games and the onboarding process.

On the 22nd, Henry Chang, CEO of Wemade, will give a speech about ‘Play and Earn: Transforming Games with the Blockchain Economy’ followed by presentations from Shane Kim, the Managing Director of WEMIX Department, and three more presenters. They will also host a networking party with companies and buyers attending GDC.

GDC 2022 will be held in San Francisco at the Moscone Center from March 21-25.

Wemade offers a global blockchain platform, WEMIX, on which games of all genres can be transformed into blockchain games. Many games are currently being serviced on WEMIX, and it aims to service 100 games whose key currency is WEMIX Token prior to 2022 year-end.

Stardust and Tilting Point Join Forces to Bring Blockchain Access to Indie Game Developers

Stardust, a seamless solution for game developers integrating NFTs into their immersive games, was selected as the partner of choice for leading free-to-play games publisher Tilting Point. This partnership combines Tilting Point's publishing platform known for scaling developers' games through UA funding and management, app store optimization (ASO), ad monetization, platform deployment and more with Stardust's technology infrastructure and blockchain agnostic approach to creating in-game NFTs and immersive experiences to propel growing developers to new heights of success.

"Partnering with Tilting Point positions Stardust as the API for leading game publishers building on blockchain," said Canaan Linder, founder and CEO of Stardust. "Together, Stardust and Tilting Point are paving the way for indie developers to quickly and easily bring play and earn and blockchain games to mobile players worldwide while leveraging next-generation, AIdriven marketing for branding and monetization."

Whether for an indie developer or AAA game publisher, Stardust is committed to providing equitable access to the tools for building in the metaverse, which aligns perfectly with Tilting Point's progressive publishing strategy and data-driven approach to player acquisition and in-game marketing.

"At our core, Tilting Point is and has always been about accelerating and amplifying developers' businesses and, in so doing, changing their lives," said Samir Agili, President and Co-CEO of Tilting Point. "The metaverse provides even more opportunities for our developers' growth, and we have big plans to help them take advantage in myriad ways. This new partnership with Stardust will enable us to be the bridge from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 for our indie developer partners, as well as easily bring new metaverse-ready games to mobile players worldwide while leveraging next-generation, AI-powered marketing for branding and monetization."

Tilting Point currently has more than 35 developer partners and has great experience in boosting the global efforts of developers and connecting them with universally recognized IPs. Developers benefit from Tilting Point's expert services in app store optimization, marketing creative and UA management bolstered by Tilting Point's user acquisition fund. Tilting Point has previously launched several top franchises in games, including SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off, Star Trek Timelines and Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest.

Like Tilting Point, Stardust is committed to empowering game developers with the tools to not just adopt blockchain technologies but to thrive in the metaverse. The company's low-code, blockchain-free API allows game developers to integrate NFTs quickly and cost-effectively in their games, delivering an effortless experience for building and scaling metaverse-ready experiences.

By empowering creators with access to its no-code, plug-and-play solutions for building on blockchain, Stardust enables game developers with the means to monetize in-game experiences, as well as acquire, engage, and incentivize a new generation of players in the metaverse.

"Tilting point is at the forefront of mobile gaming," said Stardust COO, Atif Khan. "Having worked with its brain trust on numerous projects over the past decade, I'm excited by what our two companies will achieve together, spawning a new era of immersive player-first experiences that leverage blockchain."

About Stardust  
Stardust powers the metaverse by making it possible for game developers to enable NFTs in their games with a blockchain-free API. Enabling game developers to build on blockchain via their effortless back-end solution, Stardust provides a seamless ecosystem for game publishers to build and scale metaverse-ready games. From a growing list of blockchain options to provisioned player-wallets using Fireblocks and a built-in NFT marketplace, Stardust is paving the path for the play-to-earn revolution.
Website | Twitter

About Tilting Point
Tilting Point is a leading free-to-play publisher that powers up existing live games using deep marketing and product expertise, cutting-edge technology, and a user acquisition war chest. Recognized as one of the top mobile game makers in the world by PocketGamer.biz in 2021, Tilting Point was founded in 2012, and has grown to a staff of over 460 people with offices in New York, Barcelona, Boston, Kyiv, Seoul, San Diego & St. Petersburg. Tilting Point's most successful games include Star Trek Timelines, Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest, and SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off.

Shrapnel to build AAA FPS on AVALANCHE



Shrapnel, the world’s first blockchain-enabled moddable AAA first-person shooter game, has selected Avalanche, the fastest smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry, as the network to underpin a new gaming experience.

Shrapnel is being developed by a BAFTA and Emmy award-winning team of game industry veterans with unmatched experience in transmedia, virtual production, and gaming-as-a-service. Designed to reward and empower players and creators, its high stakes gameplay is fueled by user generated content. In order to facilitate this ever-evolving design, Shrapnel requires a high degree of customization. As the premier platform for individuals and enterprises to create powerful, reliable, and secure networks with uniquely customizable implementations, Avalanche offers the ideal foundation to build Shrapnel upon.

Don Norbury, Head of Studio at Shrapnel, said: “Shrapnel is being built from the ground up, with community involvement driving gameplay and development at every stage. Choosing Avalanche, with its blazingly fast, low cost, and eco-friendly network, was a no brainer for our team. The ability to run Subnets and define our own parameters provides the flexibility needed to facilitate the type of adrenaline-pumping, extraction-based shooter that Shrapnel is. We know that reducing frictional elements and minimizing risk will be key for bringing players on board. With Avalanche as our foundation, we are excited to showcase all the features of AAA gaming that players know and love, while also enabling new modding capabilities and reward mechanisms.”

Low-latency, seamless, glitch-free gameplay is a basic requirement for players plugging into blockbuster games. With its unmatched processing power, Avalanche is well-equipped to enable the quick loading speeds and smooth player experience that Shrapnel players will expect. Avalanche’s breakthrough consensus protocol is efficient and scalable, with the ability to handle high levels of throughput. This means that the game will also easily support a growing number of players and a more complex economy as Shrapnel’s popularity increases.

The Avalanche network consists of a core set of public chains, as well as custom, application-specific chains called “Subnets”. Subnets enable developers like Shrapnel to fully customize their implementation based on the needs and rules of the game. Gaming sessions and in-game asset trading activities will take place in their own Subnet, enabling a gasless environment to keep players focused on gaming.

As an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible chain, Avalanche enables all of Shrapnel’s in-game assets to be interoperable with EVM compatible chains. This functionality allows players to transfer their assets from Shrapnel’s marketplace to Avalanche C-chain, trade with other players and community members, and then bring them back in game sessions. This dedicated subnet guarantees the reliability and speed gamers expect from a AAA experience.

Ed Chang, Director of Gaming at Ava Labs said, “Shrapnel’s entry into the market is symbolic of the maturation of GameFi towards AAA quality. Since launch, Avalanche has cemented its position as one of the fastest organically growing ecosystems in crypto with over 500 projects building on the platform. Now, welcoming its first AAA game into the ecosystem will showcase how Avalanche’s unmatched flexibility, speed, cost, and eco-friendly credentials make it the perfect foundation for top tier gaming projects to build upon.”

The news follows the close of a successful seed funding round for Shrapnel, who raised $10.5 million USD from leading players including Griffin Gaming Partners, Polychain Capital, and Forte.

Full details of the game and a trailer are set to be released soon. Visit the Shrapnel website for more information.

Info via press release

GameStop launches NFT marketplace and dev fund with Gods Unchained platform Immutable X

The market for NFTs hit nearly $25 billion in sales in 2021, compared to just $94.9 million the year before, as the speculative crypto asset exploded in popularity, data from market tracker DappRadar showed.

While some see NFTs as the future of ownership in the online world, and buying NFTs as a vote of confidence in the development of "Web3" or the metaverse, others are baffled as to why so much money is being spent on items which do not physically exist.

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NFT sales extend to art, sports collectibles, and music.

Sydney, Australia-based Immutable raised $60 million in its last round of funding led by BITKRAFT Venture and King Rival Capital in September. Immutable is the developer of NFT games Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians.

Immutable has created Immutable X, a Layer-2 scalability protocol for NFTs on Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network. This means it enables transactions at a much faster rate compared to Ethereum, requires low computing power and has lower environmental impact.

Immutable X will also become a layer-2 partner and platform for GameStop.

Info via Reuters

Wrestling Icon “Nature Boy” Ric Flair Takes Blockchain Brawlers to the Next Level on WAX

 (WAX), the #1 metaverse blockchain for video games and NFTs and the most utilized blockchain in the world with over 12 million accounts and 20 million daily transactions, is thrilled to announce that entertainment legend “Nature Boy” Ric Flair is coming to the Blockchain Brawlers in a series of 100 NFTs in early March. The collection of legendary NFTs will play a key role in the soon-to-launch play-to-earn (P2E) game launching at the beginning of Q2 on the WAX blockchain.

“Blockchain Brawlers on WAX represents a huge leap forward for the blockchain gaming community of players. We combine best-in-class user experiences with an ultra-compelling crafting component. This will be buoyed by a well-balanced in-game economy to deliver the most compelling experience in the P2E space”

“We’re head over heels excited for “Nature Boy” Ric Flair to join Blockchain Brawlers,” said William Quigley, President and Co-Founder of WAX. “He has made massive waves in the ring for decades, so it’s only fitting for him to bring his talents and exuberant persona to the metaverse. This is a dream come true for the WAX family and community.”

This gives players who haven’t been able to get their hands on one of the coveted Founder’s Edition legendary brawlers (currently on auction at wdny.io/all-auctions) the perfect opportunity to get in the game. The drop will feature 100 packs that will be sold (and made available to those lucky enough to get whitelisted) in early March on WAX (details on getting onto the whitelist coming soon via Discord).

One hundred lucky players will receive a pack that contains one (1) “Nature Boy” Ric Flair Legendary NFT and one (1) free Ring NFT in one (1) of four (4) editions – including Standard, Hard Core, Cage Match and Death Match. Plus, each buyer has the ultra-rare chance of scoring the icon wearing one (1) of three (3) ultra-rare belts, including National Champion, World Champion and Metaverse Champion.

And of course, beyond their mechanics, each NFT celebrates Ric Flair’s exuberant character and unique appeal – they’re all masterfully designed by WAX studios portraying his celebrated flowing locks, diamond-studded robes and off-the-charts enthusiasm.

This comes at a time when WAX auctions for “Founder’s Edition” 1-of-1 Legendary NFTs have become something of a feeding frenzy. Players can’t seem to get enough, with the top-selling Brawler garnering over 50,000 WAXP. The current crop of Blockchain Brawlers “Founder’s Edition” Legendary 1-of-1 auctions typically go for well north of 30,000 WAXP.

“Blockchain Brawlers on WAX represents a huge leap forward for the blockchain gaming community of players. We combine best-in-class user experiences with an ultra-compelling crafting component. This will be buoyed by a well-balanced in-game economy to deliver the most compelling experience in the P2E space,” said Michael Rubinelli, Head of Studio, WAX Games.

Tune into the Blockchain Brawlers Discord Channel for instructions on how to get whitelisted and for updates on pricing and when the packs will drop in early March.

About Blockchain Brawlers

Created by WAX Studios, Blockchain Brawlers is the rowdiest play-to-earn game in metaverse history. We’re talking about a ragtag brigade of high-flying heels that includes the likes of The Iron Pole, Crocodile Dundalk, Juggernaut (to name a few) that help gamers brawl their way to NFT supremacy. The game features 400 “Founder’s Edition” Legendary 1-of-1 brawlers, a limited-edition collection of Ric Flair NFTs, hard-hitting gear packs, and more to help players brawl their way to fame and fortune.

About WAX - The King of NFTs

The Worldwide Asset eXchange™ (WAX), aka the King of NFTs, is the world’s #1 blockchain, as measured by number of users and transactions, according to Dappradar.com. WAX’s mission is to bring NFTs to the mass market in the safest, most secure, environmentally friendly, and easy-to-use marketplace in the world. WAX is also the leading entertainment NFT network — in 2018, WAX introduced vIRLs®, giving consumer product companies the ability to directly link NFTs to physical consumer products.

Concept Art House Partners with Nemus to Create NFT Rights to Conserve the Amazon Rainforest

Concept Art House (CAH), a leading content developer and publisher for some of the world's most recognizable NFTs, brands, and video game art, today announced a partnership with Nemus, a collectible NFT experience designed to conserve and protect the Amazon Rainforest.

CAH will create original artwork for all non-legendary features for the Nemus Genesis Drop. This incredible, hand painted artwork will portray unique flora and fauna, representing the actual biodiversity of the land, incentivizing ongoing activity, engagement and gamification to conserve and preserve the rainforest.

"This is truly a rewarding and impactful project to be involved in given its direct and measurable impact on our environment," said CAH CEO James Zhang. "We are proud to be a part of this much-needed effort and our commitment will go well beyond the initial design scope as we become enmeshed in the Nemus community and an active Guardian of the land by holding a Nemus NFT."

"Concept Art House is way more than an artistic partner as they are deeply plugged into the Web3 ecosystem via other high-level ventures and understand the power of the gamification of NFTs and how they can create a vibrant community for a greater cause," said Flavio de Meira Penna, Founder and CEO of Nemus. "We look forward to everything they will bring to the table and are confident that our collaboration will be sustainable and extend to further projects."

Buying or holding a Nemus NFT (also known as becoming a Guardian) is a requirement to participate in the Nemus DAO, which will be live in Q4 2022. Holding an NFT is not a claim to actual ownership of the secured and at-risk land; the NFT is instead used to earn the native NEA token to unlock ongoing game rewards and foster sustainable activity on the land.

About Concept Art House
Since 2007, Concept Art House (CAH) has provided art and support for many of the top entertainment companies in the world. CAH has shipped over 1000 games and collectibles with the most influential brands in gaming, entertainment, and digital assets/NFTs with many reaching top rankings in iTunes, Google Play, Steam, OpenSea, and console marketplaces. CAH has created art for blockbuster franchises such as: ROBLOX, Frank Miller's Sin City, Call of Duty Mobile, Fortnite, Game of Thrones: Conquest, Hearthstone, League of Legends, Magic: The Gathering, Marvel: Contest of Champions, NBA 2K series, and many more. CAH is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Shanghai and Chengdu. Visit us at www.conceptarthouse.com

Join the CAH Community
Twitter: https://twitter.com/conceptarthouse 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conceptarthouse/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/concept-art-house/

CryptoSlam Raises $9 Million Strategic Seed From Animoca Brands, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, and Mark Cuban

 CryptoSlam, a leading provider of data and transparency for the NFT industry, today announced the close of an oversubscribed $9 million capital raise. 

The strategic seed round was led by Animoca Brands, the company driving digital property rights via NFTs and gaming to build the open metaverse, with participation from CryptoSlam pre-seed investors Mark Cuban and Sound Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary.

"NFTs entered the mainstream this past year and are here to stay," said Randy Wasinger, Founder and CEO of CryptoSlam. "Since 2018, we've been laying the groundwork to provide ultimate transparency for the NFT industry, and this strategic capital raise marks a key milestone for us as we continue to grow along with it. We're blessed to have Animoca Brands, Mark Cuban and an incredible list of other strategic investors aligned with us as we take this next step forward."

"Cross-chain aggregation and analysis of NFT data are services essential to the development of the open metaverse, and CryptoSlam has clearly established itself as a leader in this area. We're thrilled to support this talented team," said Yat Siu, executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands.

Mark Cuban added, "I'm excited about what CryptoSlam has accomplished to be the de facto source of information and pricing on all things NFT."

Other investors in the round include OKEx Blockdream Ventures, the venture arm of cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, blockchain protocols Binance Smart Chain and Polygon, KCRise Fund, PKO Investments, Stocktwits, Forte, Twenty5Twenty and Red Beard Ventures.

The round also saw participation from a long list of prominent founders including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Mark Pincus (Zynga), Nigel Eccles (FanDuel), James Park (Fitbit), Randall Kaplan (Akamai Technologies), Alexandra Wilkis Wilson (Gilt.com), Kun Gao (Crunchyroll), Chris Wang (Playdom), Dennis Fong (Xfire), Greg Tseng (Tagged), Holly Liu (Kabam), Sebastien Borget (The Sandbox), and co-founders of Rotten Tomatoes, Stephen Wang and Patrick Lee.

This comes on the heels of a significant year of growth for the company, as the global NFT landscape exploded in volume and expanded across multiple blockchains and use cases. Thousands of NFT enthusiasts, speculators and market watchers visit CryptoSlam each day to analyze NFT market trends and conduct deep analytics on a rapidly growing list of NFT collections.

CryptoSlam's NFT collection rankings are recognized as a leading cross-blockchain indicator of interest in NFT collections, much like CoinMarketCap is for cryptocurrencies. In addition, CryptoSlam's NFT market data is frequently cited by media outlets including Forbes, Bloomberg, The Motley Fool, TechCrunch, Reuters, TheStreet, CNBC and many others.

The CryptoSlam team has grown to over 20 team members including several key executive hires (assisted by the global executive recruitment firm, Rosenzweig & Company). The investment will be used to support an aggressive hiring plan, expand the development of the CryptoSlam platform for new and existing blockchains, and support the launch of several new products under the CryptoSlam brand such as an enterprise NFT data API, allowing developers to build on top of the platform.

About CryptoSlam
CryptoSlam is a leading aggregator of non-fungible token (NFT) data from a growing list of popular blockchains, including Ethereum, Ronin, Solana, Flow, Polygon, WAX and many others. Launched in 2018 by a lifelong baseball card collector as a way to track the early Ethereum NFT collectible game MLB Champions, CryptoSlam has supported the NFT industry from its infancy by being the first to track and organize NFT data across multiple blockchains. CryptoSlam rose to wide popularity as the first platform to track NBA Top Shot transactions on the Flow blockchain as it became massively popular in early 2021. Since then, CryptoSlam has obtained the backing of many prominent investors, including the renowned entrepreneur and television personality Mark Cuban, and has established itself as a trusted source of transparency for the NFT industry at large.

For more information, visit www.cryptoslam.io or follow on Twitter.

Ubisoft revels its new NFT gaming platform built on Tezos

Today, Ubisoft announced Ubisoft Quartz, a new platform for players to acquire Digits, the first NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) playable in an AAA game and running on energy-efficient technology. Launching in beta with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon® Breakpoint on Ubisoft Connect for Windows PC, Digits will be released as part of limited Editions, each composed of a fixed number of cosmetic items.

Digits are a new way to experience cosmetic items, combining the fun of playing with AAA quality assets and the thrill of owning NFTs that represent unique, collectible pieces of Ubisoft game worlds. Digits are collectible in-game vehicles, weapons, and pieces of equipment that offer players unprecedented ways to connect with and enjoy more value from the games they love:

• Uniqueness: Each Digit is a unique collectible that features its own serial number for others to see in-game, also keeping track of its current and previous owners for years to come, making players an integral part of the game’s history.

• Playability: Digits are high-quality in-game collectibles with active utility value. As playable cosmetic items, Digits provide players the ability to personalize their experience and complete their missions with style.

• Control: Each Digit comes with a certificate of ownership stored on blockchain, a decentralized, community-driven technology independent from Ubisoft, which grants players more control than ever. With Digits, items are no longer bound to a player’s game inventory since they can be put on sale for other eligible players to acquire on third-party platforms outside of the Ubisoft ecosystem.

This large-scale experiment is the next step in Ubisoft’s four-year exploration of blockchain technology through in-house research and development and close collaboration with renowned specialists within the startup ecosystem.

“Our long-term efforts led us to understand how blockchain’s decentralized approach could genuinely make players stakeholders of our games, in a way that is also sustainable for our industry, placing back into their hands the value they generate through the time they spend, the items they buy or the content they create online,” said Nicolas Pouard, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab. “Ubisoft Quartz is the first building block in our ambitious vision for developing a true metaverse. And it can’t come to life without overcoming blockchain’s early-form limitations for gaming, including scalability and energy consumption.”

To operate the first energy-efficient NFTs playable in a AAA game, Ubisoft Quartz leverages Tezos, a blockchain running on a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, using exceedingly less energy to operate than Proof-of-Work blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

In-game #NFTs are here, and they are built on #Tezos.@ubisoft has chosen to build Ubisoft Quartz on the scalable and energy-efficient @Tezos blockchain.

Find out more about the first major gaming company to launch in-game NFTs:https://t.co/UH8JMAFz7l pic.twitter.com/4mhRpN51xf

— Tezos (@tezos) December 7, 2021

"Energy-efficiency is a key requirement to propel blockchain technology into a future where it can be widely used by millions of players. We chose Tezos because of its original Proof-of-Stake network and its leadership on clean NFTs,” says Didier Genevois, Blockchain Technical Director at Ubisoft. “One transaction on their network uses the same amount of energy as streaming 30 seconds of video, while the previous generation of blockchain networks can consume the same energy required for one year of non-stop streaming. This low carbon footprint means that both our developers and our players can prioritize innovation without compromising sustainability.”

To ensure that players can use Digits to the full extent of their utility, Ubisoft Quartz will only be available to players that meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Play Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint on Ubisoft Connect for Windows PC

• Reach at least the XP Level 5 in the game

• Be at least 18 years old

In addition, the number of Digits of a single Edition that a player can own at any time is limited to one.

Ubisoft Quartz will be available in beta starting December 9 at 6PM UTC in the USA, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Australia and Brazil. The experiment will kick off with three drops of free Digits on December 9, 12, and 15, to reward the early adopters among players. Digits can be claimed on the Ubisoft Quartz platform and played with in Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Other drops are planned for early 2022, and more details will be shared at a later date.

To learn more about Ubisoft Quartz, Digits and eligibility please visit: https://quartz.ubisoft.com

To learn more about the context around the project, please visit: https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/6as5XUADxpbBblHxFVhhzg

For more information on Tezos’ energy consumption, please visit: tezos.com/carbon