This Week in Crypto Games: 'Crypto Valleys' Blasts Off, Immutable and Polygon Plot $100M Fund

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re debuting This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

A tale of two Blast games: Less than a month after the mainnet launch of Ethereum scaling network Blast, we’re starting to see games grab attention—in good and bad ways.

On the upside, DeFi farming game Crypto Valleys is hot right now as players open up randomized NFT seed bags, plant their crops, and pray for some juicy YIELD. That’s actually the name of the token, and it’s the biggest one being traded on Blast as of Saturday.

Less positive news is that Super Sushi Samurai, a Blast-powered game running in messaging app Telegram, was exploited last week and drained of $4.6 million worth of tokens. The good news is that it ultimately proved to be a white hat hack, and the funds were returned to the team, less a reward fee. The game will be relaunched with a new v2 token.

Immutable x Polygon fund: Ethereum scaling giants Immutable and Polygon are teaming up yet again, this time to launch a $100 million gaming investment fund led by King River Capital. The fund will invest in crypto games across platforms, though the first few games revealed so far—including Pixelmon and MetalCore—collectively run on their own networks.

Saga mainnet nears: Layer-1 blockchain network Saga will launch its mainnet in April following months of play-to-airdrop campaigns, the company said at the Game Developers Conference this week. The token, which eligible wallets can currently claim, should go live then too. The firm is also launching its own in-house game publishing division called Saga Origins.

ICYMI

• Final Fantasy maker Square Enix revealed a strategic investment in crypto-native game shop HyperPlay, and will bring its Ethereum NFT game Symbiogenesis to the platform.
• Crypto exchange OKX has teamed up with Ethereum gaming network Immutable to roll out a GameFi launchpad, along with other integrations between them.
• Xai, a layer-3 Ethereum gaming network built on Arbitrum tech, could get 100+ new games this year via a partnership with The Media Indie Exchange (The MIX).
• Guild of Guardians, a long-in-the-works mobile RPG from Immutable, will finally see a global launch on May 15 on iOS and Android.
• Portal, the cross-network gaming token, rolled out staking features last week, promising exclusive benefits and perks to users who lock up their PORTAL tokens.

• Shrapnel expanded its Epic Games Store early access experience last week with the addition of an in-game marketplace for NFT weapon cosmetics.
• Major crypto exchange Coinbase added Ronin (RON) trading last week, fueling another price pump for the network behind Pixels and Axie Infinity.
• Notcoin has topped 30 million total players as the Telegram-based clicker game nears its upcoming token launch on The Open Network (TON).
• NIM Network, built to power AI gaming experiences, is serving up the first airdrop for Dymension (DYM) stakers—but also holders of Parallel and Pirate Nation NFTs.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read: