The blockchain gaming business has changed into a “sport of musical chairs,” with no contemporary capital flowing in — simply the identical cash biking by means of completely different gaming tasks, in response to a blockchain gaming government.
“There is no such thing as a new cash coming into the system,” Gunzilla Video games Web3 director Theodore Agranat advised Cointelegraph at Consensus 2025 in Hong Kong.
Current capital is being shuffled round
Agranat stated “present capital” is simply being recycled between gaming tasks, with no new worth getting into the system.
“I might say it is also slightly little bit of a sport of musical chairs,” he stated. Blockchain gaming noticed $16 million in funding in January, nearly 92% down from December 2024’s $222 million, as per analytics platform DappRadar.
Agranat identified that distinctive lively wallets (UAW) in blockchain gaming have fallen from “round 10 million final summer time” to 7.5 million at the moment, with roughly 70% of Q1 2024 progress pushed from airdrop and farming campaigns.
DappRadar named Q1 2024 the “play-to-airdrop” period, highlighting blockchain video games like RPG sport Kuroro Beasts, fighter sport AI Enviornment, and card technique racing sport MixMob as notable video games with important airdrops over the quarter.
Gunzilla Video games Web3 director Theodore Agranat spoke to Cointelegraph at Consensus 2025 in Hong Kong. Supply: Cointelegraph
Agranat stated that customers had been artificially creating a number of crypto wallets and interesting with video games solely to gather airdrops, a way he stated is “completely unsustainable.”
No loyalty in blockchain gaming
“They are going to simply go from undertaking to undertaking and extract no matter worth they will from that undertaking. And as soon as there’s no extra worth available there, they’ll transfer on to a different undertaking,” he stated.
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“These usually are not long run like purchasers or customers of your undertaking or your product,” he stated.
“They’re professionals {and professional} of us that, in lots of situations, are simply speculators that wish to make a return on the funding,” he stated.
Agranat stated the blockchain gaming sector must make the gameplay expertise the primary focus to maneuver ahead — a sentiment that has been echoed throughout the business for a while.
In July 2024, Kori Leon, co-founder of the TON-based gaming ecosystem Pixelverse, stated that some blockchain video games did not ship on their guarantees. He stated that regardless of getting a variety of backers and funding, some Web3 gaming tasks couldn’t appeal to gamers.
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