You’re seeing this correctly: It’s Thursday, and Web3 Weekly is coming at you with a double feature today. RIP your inboxes.

After spending the week on X and in spaces, we had far too much information (and opinions) on Creators League to just throw it in the weekly. So, if you haven’t already, make sure to check it out.

Welcome to all the new subscribers and followers who decided to join the chat over the past week, and thank you for getting us one step closer to a sponsorship with Mr. Beast himself. Maybe not there yet, but we could probably scrape some money together to give away a fractionalized Feastable.

Enough about Jimmy, here’s what else was going on in the world of web3 gaming this week:

• PUBG to Web3

• Change Log

• Yuga Gaming Bullrun

• Google x Web3 Gaming

• Other News

PUBG to Web3

Arguably one of the founding fathers of the battle royale genre, PUBG has continuously been one of the top-played games since it evolved from a mod of H1Z1. Last month, the six-year-old logged over 294M active players and 6.76M hours streamed on Twitch.

Krafton, the developers behind the game, are venturing into web3 with their first blockchain project - Settlus. The new Cosmos-based layer-1 built was announced at the Circle Hacker House during Korea Blockchain Week and aims to be a payment settlement layer to empower the creator economy.

The announcements didn’t stop there. Krafton doubled down on its web3 initiative and stated that Settlus will be home to their metaverse platform, Project Migaloo, announced earlier in the year.

Although we’re a ways off a chicken dinner, the Settlus testnet is due to launch at the beginning of 2024.

Change Log

• Axie Homland’s pre-beta update included changes to reward structures and the launch of the Moonfall reward mechanic.

• Echelon’s website update lets users assemble and cache Prime Drives.

• Mythical Games announced a shift to mobile-first for Blanko’s Block Party.

• The inaugural Oras mint for Zynga’s Sugartown was set for next Wednesday (9/13).

• Axie Infinity added the Gunbound-inspired game Sky Smash to Greenlight.

• Guild of Guardians released an ecosystem update and changes to its economy.

• Phantom Galaxies opened up the Ceres Quadrant in the launch of the Recon Phase.

• Pipeflare integrated on NEAR’s EVM-compatible Aurora network.

Yuga Gaming Bullrun

While the floor price of BAYC might be down horribly, Yuga Labs’ social capital is at an all-time high for us. As we patiently await access to Wreck League, Yuga blessed us with the launch of HV-MTL Season 4 and the announcement of Legends of the Mara (LoTM) this week.

HV-MTL Season 4

The Rift is officially almost open, and HV-MTL is back for Season 4. Last season brought swamp-inspired crafts with The Swampening, and now it’s time for the Mechs to enter the Rift to fight, collect items, and earn juicy rewards. In order to participate, Holders must expand their HV-Homes until they can see a Rift tile. The barrier to entry has been lowered with players not requiring a direct connection to the Rift - build far enough into the darkness, and you find it!

Final testing before the game found some bugs right before today’s launch, but BAYC stated that the Rift will be opened next week, and an official release date should come Monday.

LoTM

Yuga Labs announced through Otherside that the LoTM open beta is expected to be released at the end of this month.

Though we’ve been given a good amount of lore from the promotion and website, we don’t know too much about the gameplay for the 2D strategy game yet. Yuga also shared from the Otherside account that the team has partnered with Mini Nation developer Faraway to build a ‘major expansion’ in Unity following the initial release.

Yuga is heating up in web3 gaming at the moment, and if it’s anything like the 2021 bull market (please be like the 2021 bull market), this could be a sign of gaming heating back up.

Google x Web3 Gaming

Google’s latest move toward tolerating blockchain came as its decision to allow web3 games to advertise with Google. The headline announcement comes a few months after the company removed restrictions for web3 games in the app store.

While the changes are promising, the effect of their decisions may not lead up to the hype. Looking at the updated ad policy (so you don’t have to), it’s a bit unclear what will be accepted.

First, we should start with what is clear: Google will allow ads for blockchain-based games involving NFTs and will maintain its same restriction on gambling-related content.

What’s less clear is its restriction on games that allow NFT staking to win anything of real-world value, including NFTs. The example given is a game that lets you stake NFTs in-game for the opportunity to earn fungible tokens.

From the looks of it, it seems that Google is fine with web3 games where NFT rewards are used only for in-game cosmetics or upgrades. Where P2E games stand is hard to say. Regardless, we’ll start to find out when the rule goes into effect on the 15th.

Other News

• Project BulletChain, a mobile third-person shooter, raised $2M in a private funding round and launched its closed beta.

• Planetarium Labs announced two new RPGs, Verse8 and Immortal Rising 2, during Korean Blockchain Week.

• Alpha Protocol Ventures raised a $20M venture fund to invest in real-world blockchain applications, blockchain gaming, and NFTs.

• Crypto.com launched Loaded Lions: Mane City, the first web3 game built on Cronos.

• Polkastarter Gaming rebranded to GAM3S.GG and raised $2M in a seed funding round led by Mechanism Capital.

• Toppin, LYNC, and Mines won their respective categories at Oasys and XPLA’s game-focused “Beyond Boundaries” hackathon in South Korea.

• Bitget Wallet partnered with Mobox to create a more interoperable gaming ecosystem.