Gm players.

I hope none of you got hit by the Ledger vulnerability today; not a pretty sight on X.

It's getting to that time of year where people are starting to wind down for the holidays but crypto - especially gaming - continues to rip. Beam has rocketed to the number two spot for top gaming tokens, up 250% in the past 30 days. It's not all rosy though as we’re still waiting for some big titles to open for early access (looking at you SHRAPNEL and DEADROP), we just want to play!

You know the drill, here’s what we’ve got coming up:

• Immortal Game Goes Web2

• Change Log

• Raini Studios Acquisition

• Release Radar

• GAM3 Awards 2023

• Other News

Immortal Game Goes Web2

Immortal Game is leaving web3 and dropping its P2E and NFT-based elements. A recent update to their wiki and on Discord expressed their "sincere gratitude” for support and their pivot toward their core passion: chess. As a result, CMT and Immortal Game-related NFTs will remain on Immutable but will no longer be supported as of December 11.

Immortal Game raised a total of $15.5M in funding across two funding rounds from notable web3 VCs like TCG Crypto, Kraken Ventures, and others. In addition to VC funding, the project raised additional funds through NFT sales of Mystery Boxes, including:

• The French ($25)

• The Caro-Kann ($100)

• The Ruy Lopez ($250)

• The Italian ($1k)

• Polo & Pan ($40 or $400)

Unfortunately, players who purchased mystery boxes were surprised to find that the team would no longer support their NFTs. Particularly those who bought Polo & Pan mystery boxes, which promised additional features like curated playlists by the artists, concert tickets for 2024, and exclusive access to private chess sessions.

The team shared that the reason for scrapping NFTs and P2E was a degraded user experience due to cheating. Cheating within the game wasn’t an unknown issue to the team—cheating is a common issue on traditional chess sites, and anti-cheat mechanisms were outlined in the whitepaper and allegedly live at the time of the announcement.

Whether cheating was the real issue or otherwise, RIP Immortal Game, and we’ll be waiting for the Anichess launch to get back on our P2E chess grind.

Change Log

• Echelon launched the Sanctuary Marketplace for trading Parallel TCG cards and other in-game assets.

• Moonlit Games’ Rogue Nations is migrating from Polygon to Beam.

• Oh Baby Kart added SpongeBob characters for a limited time through Oh Baby! Games’ partnership with Paramount.

• Mighty Action Heroes Season 2 “Heroic Ascent” is now live.

• Forge adds Aperion as a game partner.

Raini Studios Acquisition

Raini Studios, the gaming studio behind The Lords of Light (RTLOL), announced that it was acquired by RJV International, a joint venture between CEDEN Network and Kanpai Studios. CEDEN Network is a self-described content delivery network that develops gaming infrastructure including the open-source gaming engine EDEN. Kanpai Studios is the team behind the Kanpai Pandas NFT collection.

As the teams merge, CEDEN CEO Alex Moody will assume the role of Managing Director, and Mike Haller, known for his work on animes like Akira and games like Medal of Honor, will take on a new role as Head of Gaming. Additional team updates and news surrounding the new venture will be announced soon.

In addition to the acquisition, the team announced that the migration of RAINI tokens to RST on Beam is now live. RST combines its native token RAINI and its pre-launch reward token PHOTON, the details of which were shared in a previous blog post by the team. Though RST will be native to Beam, the token will be interoperable with other networks via Layer Zero, and the team is planning on making its NFT-based cards interoperable in the near future.

Release Radar

• My Neighbor Alice (Alpha Season 4): Live

• Oh Baby! Kart (Closed Beta): Live

• Avalon (Early Access): Live

GAM3 Awards 2023

A week after Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year at the annual Game Awards, in the web3 world, we had the The GAM3 Awards looking to crown web3 counterparts. The event was well attended, with over 36k viewers on Twitch and another +1k on YouTube and other live platforms. Parallel was named Game of the Year and won two categories (I’m sure Griff will be ripping packs in celebration).

Outside of the awards ceremony we also got some exclusive looks at upcoming games, like Forgotten Playland and Ultra’s exclusive shooter Project Citadel. How long until both award shows merge and we see web3-enabled titles compete against traditional games - it will probably be a long time - but we look forward to the day (we should start with having playable games before handing them rewards).

You can catch the VOD here.

Other News

• Gods Unchained was removed from the Epic Games Store after receiving an “Adults Only” ESRB rating for being a P2E game.

• Ultra launched its first tradable game license for Josh Journey.

• Com2uS’s gaming blockchain XPLA announced Google Cloud as a Volunteer Validator.

• Valeria Games teased IP collaborations with BAYC, CryptoPunks, and Azuki.

• MATR1X KUKU NFTs reached a floor of 2.45 ETH shortly after minting out at 0.4.

• Farcana shared details for its upcoming Mars Enigma Vault mint, set for December 19 at 9 am EST.

• Nine Chronicles recently recorded an all-time high player count of 115k MAUs following the launch of its mobile release.

• Immutable shared new details on gas sponsorship on the Immutable zkEVM.

• Portal will hold its presale on December 15 at 10 am EST, 3 pm UK.