Blockchain gaming in 2025 : Tokens fail so let's attempt one thing new – Informal Degens and ecosystems?

2025 was the yr wherein the dream shaped in late 2020, and have become a nightmare in 2024, lastly expired.

No-one needs to personal — not to mention purchase — your blockchain recreation’s token. The play-to-earn cycle is over.

Throughout this era, hundreds of tasks blended and remixed the meta in dozens of various formulations however the finish end result was at all times the identical. Whereas some folks will maintain your token when the worth goes up, no-one needs to the touch it when the worth goes down.

The proof is the perfect performing main recreation token of 2025 was WEMIX, which was down 53%, whereas RON dropped 92% and PIXEL 95%. All of those tokens additionally noticed their worth fall considerably throughout 2024.

The broader dissonance, nonetheless, was that 2025 was a fairly good yr for crypto adoption, with property equivalent to Bitcoin and stablecoins making irreversible inroads into the psyche of Wall Avenue and Important Avenue.

Positive, worth volatility stays excessive — primarily for macro, not crypto causes. However in any other case, adoption of made-up pc cash hit an all-time excessive.

If nothing else, this demonstrates {that a} mixture of endurance and truly fixing real-world issues — on this case, world demand for dollar-based property, low transaction charges, 24/7 entry and many others — ultimately pays dividends.

So the place does that go away blockchain gaming?

Sore, bruised and struggling to regain belief and relevance, that’s for positive. However extra positively, the groups which have a powerful concept of:

what they're doing,

who they're doing it for,

and why they're doing it,

now have the time and area to develop and discover product-market-fit with out anybody asking ‘wen token?’.

1:58 2025 was the tip of play-to-earn cycle which began in 2021 with Axie Infinity.

3:10 Nonetheless, crypto had an ideal yr when it comes to Tradfi adoption; ETFs, stablecoins, DATs and many others.

7:50 Why have crypto incentives not labored for blockchain video games?

11:00 Including real-world worth has overwhelmed the opposite the explanation why folks play video games.

14:30 The killer function of blockchain video games shouldn’t be making a living however property having worth.

17:40 Tokens are useless; a minimum of tokens which might be accessible for buying and selling on centralized exchanges.

24:58 Do stablecoins eat all different types of cost together with in video games?

26:01 Legendary Video games is launching a brand new USDC-based NFT market in 2026.

33:03 Funding for video games generally and blockchain video games specifically has been brutal.

36:53 In 2025, blockchain recreation funding was $350 million, $1 billion in 2024, $1.7 billion in 2023.

41:03 Pixels and its forthcoing Stacked rewards app goes for a mass viewers.

44:44 YGG gave up on mass market guilds and is making Informal Degen video games for crypto folks.

55:06 One other development is giant video games like MapleStory and EVE Frontier constructing ecosystems.

1:03:00 The Sandbox is launching its new group memecoin Corners platforms.

1:04:45 An instance of the sector’s change in 2025 is Mighty Bear Video games rebranding to Wearemighty.

1:09:25 Immutable additionally had a big change of focus from video games to advertising and marketing in 2025.

1:13:15 The merchandise that die in 2026 would be the ones with precisely the identical technique as 2025.

Learn all our Finish of 12 months options through the EOY 2025 tag.

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