$2 billion invested into blockchain game sector during 2022
Making sense of the data
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According to my list of publicly announced blockchain game (and metaverse) investments, we’ve broken the $2 billion figure for 2022, and that’s with two weeks to go until we close out Q1.
In terms of comparisons, here are some numbers
2021 Q1*: $2 billion
2021 Q4: $1.6 billion
2021 Q3: $1.2 billion
2021 Q2: $400 million
2021 Q1: $430 million
From a quarterly perspective, it looks like the pace is still accelerating.
However, we do have to bear in mind that there is a fairly elastic period between a funding round being technically closed and when it’s actually announced. In my experience that can be anything from two to six months.
If we break down the numbers on a monthly basis, we can attempt to refine our view: notably no-one announces deals in December and the biggest month in 2022 to-date was January.
Conversely if we look at the number of deals announced, actually December was the busiest month.
So clearly what doesn’t get announced in December are the big deals because all those top cats are on holiday and can’t sign off the paperwork. In this case it seems likely to me that the OpenSea ($300 million) and Animoca Brands ($358 million) deals were pushed into January.
To that degree, the growth rate of Q1 2022’s total investments compared to Q4 2021 is likely over-estimated.
Who raises what?
Looking to the future, for this growth to continue, what’s also worth considering is which companies still have the capacity to close very large rounds.
A lot of the most eye-watering deals have come from high quality companies who have completed multiple rounds quickly. It’s now hard to see that the likes of Forte, Sorare, Animoca, Dapper Labs, Polygon, OpenSea or Immutable could be tapping the markets again during 2022.
It’s also worth pointing out that these are either blockchains, platforms or marketplaces (or in the case of Sorare spending $500 million on licenses). There just aren’t many such companies operating at this scale.
Which isn’t to say we won’t see raises of hundreds of millions of dollars during the rest of 2022. We certainly will because VCs continue to raise enormous billion dollar funds. It’s just that imho the rationale for large raises is becoming harder to justify.
Maybe we should be focusing less on the total amounts and more on the number of deals — something that’s obviously harder to keep track of in the world of NFT drops and token launches.
In other words, more work for me!
Funding news
Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden has closed a $27 million Series A round. Paradigm led with the likes of Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Electric Capital and Solana Ventures participating.
NFT trading volume on Solana have been increasing in recent weeks. The blockchain is now ranked higher than Avalanche, Ronin and Flow, with Magic Eden claiming it has 90% of the Solana secondary market. Its main competitor is Justin Kan’s Fractal.
In terms of future projects, Magic Eden has just launched its game-centric Eden Games portal and also plans to launch a venture fund to encourage ecosystem system growth.
Turkish Metaverse Game Studios has announced a $10 million funding round for its PC game Angelic. Animoca Brands and Pantera Capital led the round, with Everyrealm, Morningstar and Solana Ventures also participating.
Referencing inspiration from Mass Effect and Divinity, the “dark sci-fi RPG” says it will contain an “engaging single player story” as well as a “multiplayer metaverse” with space colonization and meta features including factions, guilds and a DAO.
French hypercasual giant Voodoo Games has led an undisclosed seed investment into Portuguese mobile game studio Volt Games. Other investors included Shilling and angels Sebastien Borget and Chris Lee. The deal is the first from Voodoo’s previously announced $200 million initiative into blockchain gaming.
Volt Games currently operates Football Clash - Mobile Soccer, which has over 200,000 MAUs. It will take this experience and launch MetaStar Strikers, running on the Polygon blockchain. Its eventual plan is to extend the MetaStar universe to cover other sports such as gold, basketball and tennis.
Product news
Immutable’s Guild of Guardians is opening up for its first pre-alpha demo. Existing owners of the game’s NFTs could register for access (now closed). 150,000 GOG tokens (worth $60,000) will be used as rewards, while 50,000 GOG tokens will also be airdropped to existing NFT holders.
The mobile game is due to go into alpha in 2H 2022, followed by a 1H 2022 beta and full release in 2H 2023.
CryptoPunk OG gmoney has launched Gmoney Brick Breaker, a themed version of the retro game including appearances from gmoney’s ape, CryptoPunk 8219.
2,333 NFTs have been minted on the Ethereum blockchain, each one of which is an onchain playable version of the game. There’s also an onchain shared leaderboard for recording high scores. The floor price for the NFTs is currently 0.28 ETH.