23 May 2025 | Weekly news roundup

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including:

• [0:28] Following Nyan Heroes, Blast Royale and Tatsumeeko, Ember Sword has shut down.
• [2:15] The background is a lot of web3 game devs raised their funding back in 2021-22.
• [4:12] $5 million isn't much money to make a good game, either web2 or web3.
• [5:07] And most teams raising money were inexperienced. They had never made a game before.
• [6:15] A team of 10 game devs probably costs around $1 million a year.
• [6:58] Ambitious games like Nyan Heroes and Ember Sword probably required +50 devs.
• [7:35] Hence $5-10 million of funding doesn't last very long. It's not a rug or a con.
• [9:30] If your game's retention isn't good enough, you can never scale or monetize it to success.
• [11:44] It's very hard to get anyone to play a new game because of Fortnite/Roblox.
• [15:23] As weaker projects shut down, the top blockchain games become clear.
• [15:54] Examples? EVE Frontier (thanks for the hat!),
• [16:51] Also Wildcard, Proof of Play, Mythical Games, Faraway, MapleStory N etc.
• [22:04] Blast Royale is being open-sourced so the community could continue to develop it.
• [24:00] Voya Games has bucked the trend, raising $5 million for idle gaming ecosystem Craft World.
• [26:50] CEO Oli Loeffler has been slowly building the game and company for the past 3 years.
• [28:10] The game combines individual resource management with collaborative events.
• [30:56] There's always something to do and blockchain adds a longer term retention layer.
• [31:34] Your resources in the main game are only valuable if you can get them into the collab events.
• [33:45] Would Craft World be a good match for Ronin?
• [35:05] Off The Grid will launch a web2 version on Steam in June.
• [37:38] The first NFT sales from Off The Grid have started - highest price to-date is over $1,000.
• [39:30] But some Steam users hate blockchain so the game will likely get review bombed.
• [41:30] Jon went to the Avalanche Summit London and was impressed with its momentum.
• [42:34] He also spoke to Nexon's Dominic Jang about MapleStory Universe and MapleStory N's launch.
• [43:00] The MSU marketplace has done $1.6 million-worth of NFT trading volume.
• [45:23] Main markets to-date for MapleStory N players are LATAM, Brazil, southeast Asia.
• [46:25] Success for Nexon isn't about the game, it's about the ecosystem, esp. 3rd party apps.
• [51:05] Ava Labs' CEO Emin Gün Sirer also spoke well about the overall vision for Avalanche.