The week of mysteries

Society, its survival and Tokyo Beast, its sanity

• Top 300 Web3 Games Index: ↓1% today, ↓45% YTD

• Ronin Games Index: ↓2% today, ↓64% YTD

• AI Gaming Agents: ↓4% today, ↓38% YTD

• Ex-Guilds Index: ↓4% today, ↓58% YTD

• Jon’s TX Games Index: -0% today, ↓43% YTD

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The key question arising during our roundup podcast this week was ‘Why isn’t Immutable saving The Mystery Society?’

An ongoing story, the Immutable-based social deduction game announced on Monday that it had run out of money and was open to offers to keep going, even as a web2 game.

Granted the game is fairly niche but it has built a core audience who seem to really enjoy it; something that’s become clear in the X thread and comments.

Indeed, various solutions have been offered, both directly from other blockchains and various communities. If nothing else, Roninites are never backward in their belief that every game should launch on Ronin.

So, despite the core team now having departed the project — leaving only CEO Chris Heatherly — there is still some hope that someone/something will enable it to continue in some form, especially as it’s now become apparent it’s only looking for $1 million in funding.

The elephant in the room, however, is what’s Immutable doing?

Just last week, it was talking up the investment success of its Inevitable Games Fund, boasting a MOIC of 2.8x. No doubt, The Mystery Society has already received some IMX grants, but — if nothing else — the optics of a well-regarded game potentially moving to a rival should have Immutable’s marketing team leaping into action.

“No great game dies on Immutable,” would be the rallying cry as it funnels millions of its Passport wallet holders in the game with extra gem drops etc etc. Web3’s Among Us moment would materialize without the need for Covid. Win-win.

For the alternative is Heatherly giving interviews about how things are much better on whatever blockchain he ends up on, resulting in the assumption — however (c)overt — that Immutable didn’t care.

And, of course, maybe it doesn’t. The hardnosed approach would be to say that saving The Mystery Society will only result in emotional blackmail from many other games in its 500-strong ecosystem.

This week, Immutable also announced absolutely bonkers Japanese-styled game TOKYO BEAST so maybe it feels that it’s finally building out selection of signature titles and doesn’t have the bandwidth for anything else.

Still, even in these dark days, The Mystery Society’s situation seems mysterious to me in more ways than one.

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Weekly News roundup

• Yuga Labs’ Otherside breaks FPS world record with 2,197 concurrent players.

• Acid Labs raises $8 million for its social web3 games.

• Jobs news: Farcade appoints Sam Steffanina as new CMO.

• Wemade’s web3 Legend of Ymir tops Google Play in South Korea.

• Netmarble has 7 games coming to Immutable in 2025.

• NHN launches mobile web3 casino game Pebble City on Sui.

• Wemix partners with South Korean esports team DRX.

• Nine Chronicles expands its NCG ecosystem with new games in 2025.

• Double jump.tokyo partners with iAgent to integrate AI agents.

• Move-to-earn Sweat Economy adds AI agents.

As discussed below:

Goodby Thor Chain news

• South Korea dev Planetarium has announced that the temporary Thor chain for its Nine Chronicle idle RPG will close down on 4th March, with rewards for all activity over the past couple of months dropping on 11th March. Players will be able to transfer their in-game NGC tokens to one of the existing game chains — Odin or Heimdall — until 1st April.