Grail.eth@graildoteth
*MIS* ADVENTURES IN WEB3 GAME INVESTING CONTINUED
The last post featured some of the games that failed.
Here are some more games I've invested in over the past two years.
These are still alive for now.
Some are in a better state than others.
I'm continually asked about the state of these games since at one time of another I posted about investing in these.
So in a mega thread, I've given my thoughts on each one as a sort of update on where things stand.
1/ @Revolving_Games
Wrote a thread roast on them some months ago, post TGE. I had nothing good to say about how much of a fuckup that was.
I had millions of USD in NFT assets there and backed the team based on their history of building real web2 games.
On TGE, the team demolished their community. Token has zero utility so far, 4 months post TGE...
Token is at 10M FDV, down from 300M on TGE. Private sales raised at 75M and 120M, so the token is literally down 87%+ in just 3 months post TGE.
All the backers and VCs (Pantera) utterly rekt.
Team have been silent, and nothing has been done on web3 side yet. Something like 35% of the tokens are going to the nodes that spit out inflation. Don't see a world where the token is going to go up, given how badly the token has cratered in just a couple months. It costs more to run a node then the tokens will pay you even. Horrible ecosystem design by the team.
Strong chance they probably just slow rug on the web3 side, build their games for web2 and just keep the profits in the company. I think that's the likely case here, if they don't run out of funding and shut down given how badly the studio has done.
Only chance here is if their still unreleased game Skyborne is actually good enough to grab real web2 revenue and team are able to link this success back to the token. Given how badly they failed to execute at TGE and beyond, this is a moonshot. I hope for my bags to be wrong here, but not optimistic.
@delabsOfficial
Worst treatment of NFT holders I've seen.
6-7% supply were promised to the NFTs. Team swore they would treat their community right.
Come TGE. team gave something like .2% with 6-month vesting instead. Gave Binance Alpha 6% or such. Rekt the community. I understand it was at the behest of some exchanges that never materialized a listing.
I personally spent about 20k buying Delab passes and another 20k or so helping them mint out a secondary mint that was failing. Invested 25k into their private sale round and agreed to become an Advisor, given the CEOs previous history as CEO of Nexon games and the projects stance towards community.
I do not support this team anymore, given how they broke all promises to NFT holders. Would never touch anything this team builds again after seeing how they played the community (and used my name to held enable this).
Token has crashed since TGE. Hard to see a path here where the company is going to be profitable. Community and NFT is already so rekt there is no place in web3 for the team anymore. Probably they rug on the web3 side and just build mini midcores for Telegram and mobile.
@UltiverseDAO
Shoved in 50k into this pile of trash.
AI metaverse.
All vapor. The team raised millions on hype and have delivered nothing of substance.
This was a failed 'made for Binance' Chinese hustle. Didn't land Binance, and it's been down down down.
Soft rug for sure.
@Tatsu_Verse
Invested 25k. Had a bunch of the NFTs (50-70k USD worth).
Dumped everything for pennies on the dollar last year when it was clear nothing was going to happen and the team were stalling around trying to find a PMF somewhere.
Was multiples up on the NFTs, but ofc I held thinking this was maybe going to be a breakout game on Solana, back when gaming even had a meta.
Ever get lost in the desert chasing a mirage and hoping that oasis you see in the distance is just 100 meters away with each step? Me holding these NFTs was this story. The game never materialized, and I held until I died of thirst.
Instead of being the breakout Solana game, they broke investor wallets. Had strong VC backing and a history of building Discord products that catered to millions of users.
The web3 game, though, basically failed to appear, and the team went back to building Discord services or something.
I perceive the team as trying at least, and they basically didn't find a PFM.
But if there is a prediction market bet on the team running out of runway and shutting down within the next 12-24 months, I'd take that bet for sure.
@CityVerseTycoon
Team minted NFT collection, launched mobile game via PWA (Progressive Web Apps -- on browsers).
Game was decent and playable, though it still needed more features to really be fun. I put hours testing it out.
There was supposed to be a token linked to NFT, but it looks like the team has shuttered the entire web3 side.
Absolute crickets the entire 2025 re the game and the web3 stuff from the team. Discord channel for the NFT remains abandoned. If the team has bailed on the NFT side completely, they should pony up a refund then.
They are still building in web2, but the web3 side (and nfts) look dead. I actually liked the game and thought it had potential with tweaks to onboard web2 users into web3.
So a pivot away from web3. The problem is that the team had a paid NFT mint, and so far, nothing has been done there for the holders.
I actually don't think the game is dead, but the NFT holders have been left for dead.
@InfiniGods
Put in 25k into the 75M round.
Had 250k worth of NFTs. That entire value is worth less than $30k now. I further spent around 60-70k spending in the game Play to Airdrop competitions and a few of the post-TGE tournaments. Yikes.
One of the most promising web3 games.
They had the community, they had the pedigree, and they had the execution ability.
Until TGE that it is.
Turned out the game was not good enough to scale to web2, and the token was just being farmed weekly by the community.
The team were supposed to launch a much updated and deeper game post TGE, but no such update was delivered, no deeper game loops appeared. A couple months post TGE, team abandoned the web3 side.
My take is the team launched the game a year too early.
Huge mistake to spend 1M on a hyperliquid spot listing for $GOD. To be fair, Hyperliquid kind of led on expectations that spot listings would matter and they would do something with their native bridge. Hyperliquid really fucked over all those spot listing ticker buyers.
The game was nowhere near ready to scale to web2 (not enough to do in the game) and the game was not ready for a token. They should have waited another 12 months before TGE.
As it turned out, the game just was not good enough for web2, and the team paused the web3 side to rebuild the entire game as a slots (pivot from cards) game.
I think the new pivot has a chance. If they can make this work in web2, they can find a way to funnel in web3 (and the token). However, the web3 side is going to be dead for the midterm.
Will see in 6 months how things look. But some hope there still seeing their new slot game product. But doesn't change the fact the token is down like 99% and the web3 assets have crashed around the same. A cautionary tale here about not being ready for a token. Team rushed out a TGE when the game was not ready and the result was the destruction of the web3 side.
I hope they can pull a pivot though, and it's one of the only games I think maybe has a chance still, even though the ecosystem is rekt. I understand if they can't make it in web2, which is their focus now, they can't make it in web3. So I'm willing to wait, even though not selling everything leading up to TGE was the fucking stupidest thing I've probably done.
Team gets a big fail for going silent on their community for most of this year though. You don't start a community, bring them along, fail them at TGE with a bunch of bad decisions, then go crickets for 10 months because you fucked up. At least communicate to the people you kicked in the balls and maybe they will stick around if they believe in your pivot.
Holding tokens on this small chance for a rebound in the future, if there ever is one.
@L3E7_Official
Not sure what's going on.
I invested $50k back in 2023 after a call with the team and spent something like 30e on the Genesis NFTs with the expectation that the team was within 12 months of launching the game.
My expectations were misled because almost 3 years later, the game is not live. To be fair, the team never gave me any hard dates, but I surely would not have put in the capital if I knew this would be a 3-5 year journey.
There have been some open betas with the game, and the game does look promising.
The NFT assets have died, though. Total wipeout. This is why you don't start minting NFTs 2-3 years in advance of your game actually being ready. I think they probably still have another year or two before the game goes live.
I'm kind of hopeful on this one as the game is really unique (basically a web3 SciFi Pokémon GO experience, mapped to the real world).
Best for teams like this to just skip out on cultivating a web3 community and doing mints years before the game launches.
@GunzillaGames
Invested in the seed.
Off The Grid is at least trying. It was the best attempt at a FPS web3 game, but the token is down only and keeping a large scale team active is expensive. Tokenomics are horrible and given the token is 80% down and a very small circulating, it's likely the token is going to start crashing hard once the investor / team unlocks start happening.
Team did a full-on second raise with the node sales and scammed everyone on that.
Game is still alive, but I think it's just a matter of time before the studio runs out of money and start dumping the charts to keep the lights on.
There are still other games, but I'll leave them off.
Some other games:
@youmio_ai
- way too early to have put out the NFTs. Team made some mistakes ($LIMBO). Unique product and not strictly just a game. Holders are getting antsy, given it's been two years. I like the team and the product is so unique (AI x Gaming) that I think it's going to be worth the wait. Still bullish.
@hytopia
Was the largest NFT holder for some years. Literally put in 1M into the old token and another 1M into the genesis NFTs. About 200k minting NFT Avatars. About 400k buying those worthless grayboys that they never did anything with. 180k minting like 650 Topia Nodes.
Yikes, one of the worst investments I've made in gaming and outside of gaming.
The team made huge mistakes with the tokenomics and has pivoted more times than Britney Spears has posted batshit crazy videos on Insta. The amount of extractive mints the team has used to fund their operation without giving back value is also a black mark.
Yet.
The team is still building, and the game platform is shaping up to be a sort of web3 Roblox that's impressive and attracting actual users and builders. I admit, I wrote off the team at the beginning of the year and sold off my NFTs given how much they kept on pivoting.
I still have a huge position of the Topia Nodes, though.
The platform is becoming one of the more interesting things coming out of web3. I hate to eat crow, given I've publicly crashed out at the team and called them extractive. Yet, here we are, and they have actually delivered a really cool platform on which you can build any kind of game or world, as per their original promise nearly five years ago.
Dare I say it may actually be worth buying the new gaming token (HYBUX)?
A potential comeback story in the market. Alas, I sold off all my NFTs. I can't believe they have managed a turnaround and are looking actually bullish as maybe a breakout game from this slop called web3 gaming.
I still have a much diminished stake in this ecosystem of 650 Topia Nodes, whatever that will be worth.
@playchronoforge
Have a big bag of NFTs. Like nearly 600 or so (second biggest holder, I think). Also invested six figures into the private sale. At the peak held nearly 1M USD in NFT values when the genesis nfts were worth .7e each.
So this is the little team that proved they could. A lot of respect for the team who are anything but shady. Frankly, the fact that they have gotten so far with so little capital and runway speaks volumes. Huge respect for the founder who literally mortgaged his house and put it into the game to keep things going.
But that's also the biggest risk: team runs out of funding.
Game is now early access, but it's clearly not ready. The team has been way fucking overly optimistic on the game launch time frames over the past 2 years.
It was supposed to launch in January 2024 and then March 2024, but the live beta was a catastrophe and showed the game was not close to ready. Team had to go back to the drawing board, hire more people and rebuild the game engine and server infra.
Well a year and a half later, it's in a much better state and probably the state it should have been in back early 2024 when they said they were ready.
But.
The game probably needs another 2-6 months of it before the game will be ready. Early access was suppose to be 1 month (sep 10 to oct 10) but that's way off. I think they need 3-6 months of early access to fix all the bugs.
But I think if they can fix the bugs, fix all the many balancing issues with the classes and gear, and get the web3 side there and make sure it works bug free, Chronoforge could be a very interesting game. We certainly don't have a web3 game like this yet.
One of the purest web3 style games we have, where the NFTs have deep utility and the token is absolutely required to play the game. Only say @playcambria has NFTs so deeply integrated into the game economy. Chronoforge takes it a level deeper, where you can play in the game with those NFTs.
This is a game I really want to see work to prove that NFTs, tokens, and gaming can coexist.
Main risk is that the team runs out of funding before they can hammer the game into a state that's ready to go live. If they rush to TGE when the game is not ready, game is finished. I think this is a significant risk here.
@Pixelmon
- oh man, probably was my biggest holding. Had nearly 8 figures in NFT value alone back in early 2024. NFT airdrop was worth 2M alone.
Bag held everything.
The one project where I'm down 85% but I still love the team, even if the TGE was way too early in hindsight. Team made the mistake of having a token years before the products were ready. But the meta at the time was to have the token out as was the community pressure, given many were still around holding from the rug era of the previous founder.
Bullish on the CEO/founder Gulio, who I think is one of the most legit founders in the space. Also bullish on the 35M treasury, which is 2x the FDV market cap. This puts @Pixelmon in a very unique situation. Literally every other gaming studio is struggling with funding. Pixlemon is sitting on a pile of capital. That gives them options.
The games they have been working on for almost 3 years are about to be launched. The focus there is on web2 NOT web3, which I think is the right move. If things don't pan out, the 35M treasury allows the team to do a complete pivot from gaming to a more bullish sector (defi), worst case, which I think is probably a good move to make.
SUMMARY
Well, a lot of misery and lost capital. There's probably 5-10 more games I can add to the list, but I'm out of energy and tired of writing this massive post. I just want the pain to end.
I probably need to come up with some lessons learned here and all since you made it this far.
Lessons?
1/ Gaming was not ready for a breakout moment. I invested too early.
2/ You can be right about a thesis, but wrong about the timing. And so far, I've been painfully wrong on the timing part.
3/ Underdog stories are not often good investments.
I also made bad decisions backing founders who had a good story (underdogs). These folks meant well but did not have the capacity or experience to deliver i.e. @ValeriaStudios).
4/ Founders fucking lie through their teeth to get funding.
Some founders were straight out scammy and lie to your face about dates.
"Oh yes, we have 1M players".
"Oh yes, the game launches in 3 months."
"Oh yes, we have a riot partnership."
"Oh yes, we are talking to Binance and have signed a LOI for a listing!"
"Oh yes, we are in talks with Bybit. The CEO's mother's husband's girlfriend works as head of listing there and we have secured a deal."
"Oh yes, Sydney Sweeny has agreed to pose nude in our game."
In gaming, never trust the team's given game launch dates or the TGE dates. 95% of the time, these are wrong.
5/ NFT mints far too early
If your game is more than 6 months away from live, don't launch an NFT collection. You will just waste capacity on appeasing an increasingly impatient, entitled, and demanding community. I see little benefit and only pain to spit out an NFT collection (even worse pain if it's a paid mint) when your product launch is distant.
6/ No game, No token
The biggest mistake is to launch a token with no product paired to it. Almost all the web3 games TGE then figure out how to build a game for the token after, sometimes years after, sometimes never after. The number one way to absolutely destroy your token. Launch your game, find a real PFM there, then throw in the blockchain layer. A token should be vital to the economic side of your game. If the token has the same utility as a memecoin, you should never launch a token. If you can't explain what the token is used for in fewer than 20 words, your token is bullshit.
7/ No money, the bear eats all your honey
Crypto has cycles. Game dev has cycles.
Both do not necessarily align.
It can take 3-6 years to build a real game of quality. And the costs are enormous. Building games is enormously expensive and time-consuming.
Crypto boom-to-bust cycles play out over 1-2 years.
Which means, a studio needs to have enough capital to comfortably build over 2, maybe 3 crypto cycles.
You don't want to be an investor in a gaming studio that runs out of capital and is forced to spit out a TGE before the game is ready, and has to launch on a DEX with a $10k liquidity pool.
THE END
There you go. Go forth, future gaming investors and let my pain be your knowledge gain.
At least don't go about and make my mistakes. I like to imagine I took an L for you guys to take a future W.
I'd be ver,y very careful playing around in gaming as an investor.
There are better sectors to invest in where you don't risk total wipeout and you don't have teams packing up your gaming nostalgia into something investable.
