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It's Monday, and we're hitting you with an early (or slightly late, for those who are less optimistic) Web3 Weekly covering last week's GDC-fueled gaming news. With all of the alpha going on at GDC and Griff on the ground with the support of Sequence, we decided to push the schedule back a bit and put this post out today.

We'll be back on our regularly scheduled programming on Thursday and share our conference insights tomorrow in a post with Sequence. RIP your inboxes.

Web3 Weekly may be late, but we’re still early here in web3 gaming. Here’s what we got for you this week:

• Insert Coin to Continue: The latest funding rounds in web3 gaming.

• Co-op Campaigns: Who’s teaming up in the gaming world?

• Change Log: Updates, patches, and new features from games we’ve covered.

• Release Radar: Upcoming games, playtests, and drops.

• On-Chain Activity: New on-chain game announcements and network migrations.

• Other News: The other things that happened in web3 gaming this week.

• Bonus Loot: Cool media we’ve been digesting this week.

Insert Coin To Continue

The latest funding rounds in web3 gaming.

• HyperPlay (Strategic). Web3 native launcher and game store aggregator HyperPlay received a strategic investment from game developer Square Enix following the inclusion of Square Enix’s first web3 title, SYMBIOGENESIS, on the HyperPlay game store.

• Inevitable Games Fund ($100M). King River Capital, Immutable, and Polygon Labs launched a $100M gaming fund aimed at investing in early-stage web3 games, including previous investments in My Pet Hooligan, Metalcore, Pixelmon, and Guild of Guardian.

• The Machines Arena ($5M). The Ronin-based top-down shooter raised seed funding in a round led by Delphi Digital and Framework Ventures with additional support from Sky Mavis, YGG, Sfermion, and others.

For all their support in helping us get to GDC and our appreciation for projects breaking the barriers to entry in web3 gaming, we wanted to take a quick moment to show some love for our friends over at Sequence.

Sequence is the all-in-one development platform for building web3 games. Easily incorporate web3 into games to onboard, monetize, grow, and retain players. From collectibles and ownable rewards to fully on-chain experiences, Sequence’s modular stack solves technical challenges, allowing developers to concentrate on creative execution.

Start building with Sequence at sequence.xyz

Co-Op Campaigns

Who’s teaming up in the gaming world?

• Merit Circle x Aethir. Merit Circle is bringing distributed GPU cloud infrastructure to Beam to support in-game AI and cloud gaming through a partnership with Aethir.

• Pixelmon x Mocaverse. Pixelmon is introducing new missions for Moca ID holders, providing unqiue ways to earn both realm points (RP) in the Mocaverse and airdrop points for the upcoming MON airdrop.

• Saga x MarbleX. Saga and MarbleX (Netamarble’s gaming blockchain) are teaming up to scale the MarbleX platform and expand Saga’s presence across Asia.

• Sequence x Google Cloud. The entire Sequence web3 game development stack is now available for Google Cloud developers, in a partnership aimed at reducing the barriers to entry for web3 game development.

• Shrapnel x Stardust. Shrapnel will introduce Stardust’s Wallet-as-a-service (WaaS) infrastructure into both its extraction shooter and its upcoming dev platform, Mercury.

• XAI x MIX. XAI Games partnered with the Media Indie Exchange (MIX) to introduce a wide range of indie games, including several titles already published on platforms like Steam, onto the XAI platform.

• XBorg x Team Liquid. Team Liquid is developing a fan engagement platform using XBorg’s player identity protocol on the Sui blockchain.

Change Log

Updates, patches, and new features from games we’ve covered.

• Axie Origins kicked off preseason 8 with the Preseason cup set for March 30.

• Aperion Battle Arena Open Beta Leaderboard rest, with the new airdrop competition going on now through April 26.

• Champions Ascension launched Maestro Towers, a new UGC/AI game mode where players can build towers and invade opponents.

• Guild of Guardians opened its preregistration on Immutable.

• Phantom Galaxies introduced co-op Patrol Missions and new wways to earn ASTRAFER tokens.

On-Chain Activity

New on-chain game announcements and network migrations.

• Colony (Solana). Parallel Studios’ AI sim game dropped several references in its new whitepaper suggesting that the project will launch on Solana. They will not provide Griff more alpha at GDC.

• Fuse Wars (Immutable). Fuse Wars is a cyber-fueled SciFi third person shooter and gaming ecosystem for single and multiplayer games. The migration to Immutable also included a partnership with OKX and an upcoming feature on the OKX GameFi NFT launchpad.

• InfiniGods: King of Destiny (Aribtrum). InfiniGods: King of Destiny is a Luck-Battle game inspired by other games in the genre like CoinMaster and MonopolyGo. Current and future InfiniGods titles will also be developed on Aribtrum.

• Scar Quest (BNB → Immutable). Scar Quest is a cross-platform strategy game with both competitive and metaverse components, currently in beta for both desktop and mobile.

Other News

• Aptos and Google Cloud’s game service and developer platform, GameStack, went live.

• Battle Bears Heroes won the Very Big Indie Pitch Award at PG Connects.

• Elixer Games added Domenation (Blackmouth Games) to its Incubation Program.

• Magmic announced a mobile-based idle tycoon game featuring MLB licensed IP.

• Night Crows exceeded $10M in global sales just three days after launch.

• Saga announced the launch of Saga Origins during its Saga Multiverse Reveal event at GDC.

• SKALE launched a $2M Grant program for gaming projects, aimed indie devs and studios in web3 or looking to make the transition.

• WEMIX’s Biroche hard fork upgrade introduced halving mechanics to its token distribution system and a fixed total supply of WEMIX tokens.

• XPLA added Builder Capital to its ongoing list of strategic investors.

• Yield Guild Games launched YGG token on Ronin Network following approval of its governance proposal.

Bonus Loot

• 📘 Calculating Virtual GDP, Chris Kaczmarczyk-Smith (Read)

• 📺️ GameSwift Explained: GS-Force AI, GameSwift (Watch)

• 🎧️ P2E is Dead? Long Live P2E! w/ Pixels, Naavik Gaming Podcast (Listen)