Crypto Games Keep Shutting Down. This $500K Fund Aims to Help Players Recover

Blockchain video games are shutting down in droves up to now this yr, as hype and funding fade and crypto buyers flip their consideration elsewhere. However one long-running crypto recreation hopes to attract a few of these gamers affected by shutdowns by providing free NFT belongings for affected customers.

Crypto buying and selling card recreation Splinterlands is inviting the gamers of failed blockchain video games to use to its newly fashioned restoration fund, through which $500,000 price of crypto tokens and in-game belongings could be unlocked over the subsequent seven years.

The challenge instructed Decrypt that it’s at present in talks with different initiatives primarily based on the Hive blockchain to allocate belongings to the fund—and invitations the broader trade to affix in to avoid wasting crypto gaming by giving burned customers a bridge to new video games.

At the moment, solely the gamers of the defunct crypto titles Pirate Nation, Tokyo Beast, and Strolling Lifeless: Empires can entry the Crypto Gaming Restoration Fund. Affected gamers should create a Splinterlands account, buy a $10 merchandise (which offers in-game credit of the identical worth), and submit their pockets tackle containing gadgets from eligible video games—which they get to maintain.

Then they will begin steadily unlocking belongings over the subsequent seven years from the $500,000 fund. The belongings are launched so long as the participant stays energetic on Splinterlands, which is measured by a collection of month-to-month challenges—resembling taking part in 5 battles.

“I welcome any of our rivals who would wish to be part of this to come back and be part of. Why would they wish to? As a result of they wish to see the house develop,” Dave McCoy, Chief Working Officer at Splinterlands, instructed Decrypt. “We’re simply the primary, however hopefully we’ve got many different folks be part of us.”

An epidemic of crypto video games shutting down has struck the trade this yr, with numerous notable initiatives closing store. That features Deadrop, Ember Sword, Nyan Heroes, Realms of Alurya, Symbiogenesis, Raini: The Lords of Mild, and MetalCore—simply to call a couple of. 

Whereas all of those video games have cited barely totally different causes behind their crashouts, one factor all of them have in frequent is that they go away behind a participant base with no recreation to play. And lots of of these gamers sunk money into supporting the challenge, and are left with tokenized belongings that now not have utility.

“I have been in a whole bunch of communities through the years. […] When a challenge will get rugged, it is a horrible feeling. Particularly when you have got excessive hopes for it,” Blaze, Splinterlands’ pseudonymous gross sales and advertising lead, instructed Decrypt. “We simply put our foot down and mentioned: Hey, sufficient is sufficient. Someone has bought to step up right here and assist these people who find themselves getting crippled.”

The Crypto Gaming Restoration Fund is ruled by a decentralized autonomous group, or DAO, that votes on which video games will probably be eligible for the fund. Every supported recreation has a selected portion of the fund that’s allotted to it, though Splinterlands didn’t affirm the precise division per recreation.



Within the first yr, 2 million SPS tokens price over $16,000—plus 5,000 Insurrection packs—are allotted to the fund. This scales as much as 10 million SPS (at present about $82,000) and 25,000 packs by the seventh yr. Rewards are then divided among the many variety of gamers that had been energetic, which means if just one particular person is energetic inside a selected pot, then they may get all the pieces, McCoy mentioned.

“The design is for seven years, as a result of we have been round for seven years,” McCoy defined. “So the purpose we’re attempting to make is we’ll be round seven extra years, as properly.”

Splinterlands is a strategic buying and selling card recreation with NFT playing cards minted and tradeable on the Hive blockchain. It initially launched in 2018 as Steem Monsters—primarily based on the Steem crypto social community—however was rebranded to Splinterlands in 2019 and has been steadily constructing ever since.

The sport’s SPS governance token first debuted in July 2021 and rapidly reached its peak of $1.07, based on CoinGecko. The token is now down 99%, nonetheless, valued at $0.008. 

McCoy instructed Decrypt via the sport’s lifespan, it has battled its method via “all the pieces” {that a} crypto recreation can face. He defined that “it’s not straightforward to handle,” and recommended that different video games haven’t survived so lengthy due to unsustainable recreation fashions—with Blaze pointing to Pirate Nation’s $150,000 monthly bills. 

Sadly, to McCoy, the wave of crypto recreation shutdowns is a mandatory purge of the trade. However he hopes that the Crypto Gaming Restoration Fund is step one to constructing the trade again up, doubtlessly with extra contributors alongside.

“Once more, this isn’t about Splinterlands. That is about the entire trade,” McCoy instructed Decrypt. “If [any game] desires to be a part of it, in the event that they wish to contribute, we might like to have them.”