Investors are abandoning blockchain games
In 2021 and 2022 blockchain games, where items trade for real money, were sold as the future of games, alongside the metaverse. Most of it failed. Confident coverage from those years is still online. Check the outcome before citing it.
What was play-to-earn?
'Play-to-earn' was the idea that in-game items could be crypto tokens, so playing a game could actually earn you money. 'The metaverse' was the idea of one big shared online world you could carry yourself across different games. Both were as much pitches to investors as they were real products.
Latest figure · 2025 so far
$0.293 billion
Money invested in blockchain gaming in the first nine months of 2025, so not a full year. DappRadar counted $129 million of it in the third quarter.
Where it stands
DappRadar, the sector's main tracker until it closed in November 2025, counted $7.6 billion invested in blockchain gaming and metaverse projects in 2022, $1.8 billion in 2024 and $293 million in the first nine months of 2025. ChainPlay classed 93% of 3,279 blockchain game projects as dead in November 2024. Meta cut about 1,500 metaverse jobs in January 2026 and is turning Horizon Worlds into a phone app. The clearest exception is Nexon's MapleStory Universe, which reports a working token economy inside an established game.
Investment peaked at $7.6 billion in 2022 and fell to $1.8 billion in 2024. DappRadar counted $293 million in the first nine months of 2025.
*Money invested in blockchain gaming in the first nine months of 2025, so not a full year. DappRadar counted $129 million of it in the third quarter.
SourceDappRadar's yearly games reports
| Year | Money invested in blockchain gaming and metaverse projects worldwide, $ billions, DappRadar's count |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 0.191 |
| 2021 | 3.7 |
| 2022 | 7.6 |
| 2023 | 2.9 |
| 2024 | 1.8 |
| 2025* | 0.293 |
Timeline
2021
Facebook renames itself Meta
Facebook changes its company name to Meta and says its focus will be to bring the metaverse to life, meaning shared virtual worlds that people visit through headsets.
Ubisoft becomes the first big publisher to put NFTs in a game
Ubisoft announces Quartz, which sells numbered items for its game Ghost Recon Breakpoint as NFTs, tradable records of ownership kept on a blockchain.
2022
Seven in ten game developers want nothing to do with it
The Game Developers Conference's yearly survey finds 70% of developers saying their studio has no interest in NFTs or cryptocurrency.
2024
Activity rises while investment falls
DappRadar, the sector's main tracker, counts 7.4 million wallets a day interacting with blockchain games at the end of 2024, up 421% in a year. Investment falls 38% to $1.8 billion. A wallet is an account, not a person, and one player or one automated program can run many.
A count finds 93% of blockchain games dead
ChainPlay, a site that lists blockchain games, checks the 3,279 projects in its database in November 2024 and classes 93% of them as dead. It also finds that 58% of the venture firms that invested in them have lost between 2.5% and 99%.
2025
A quarter in which more than 300 blockchain games close
DappRadar reports $73 million raised by blockchain games in the second quarter of 2025, down 93% from a year earlier, and more than 300 games shut down.
Square Enix ends its NFT game
Square Enix, the Japanese publisher of Final Fantasy, winds up Symbiogenesis, its NFT project, in July 2025.
The sector's own scorekeeper shuts down
DappRadar announces it is closing, saying the business has become financially unsustainable in the current environment. Most published figures on blockchain games had come from it.
2026
Meta takes its metaverse out of virtual reality
After laying off roughly 1,500 staff in its Reality Labs division in January, Meta says Horizon Worlds, its virtual world, will become almost exclusively a phone app. TechCrunch puts Reality Labs' losses since 2020 at nearly $80 billion.
One big publisher's token economy is still running
NEXPACE, a Nexon subsidiary, reports that MapleStory Universe took in 30.98 million of its NXPC tokens in the first half of 2026, 95% of it from core gameplay, with 855,500 wallets created since launch. The report gives no value in dollars.
Consequences
012025
The investors moved on to AI
Investment in crypto shifted toward real-world assets and artificial intelligence, DappRadar reported in April 2025, a trend that continued into the first quarter of that year.
022023
The model was built for earning, and players wanted entertainment
A focus on what players could earn took precedence over fun and sustainability, Naavik and Delphi Digital wrote in January 2023, and it made a bubble that lasted only as long as new players put new money in.
032023
The next games have to be fun first
Players will be skeptical, Naavik and Delphi Digital argued after the crash, so the blockchain games that come next need to be fun first and deliver on their promises.
Objections
Counterpoint2025
DappRadar's totals count more than games
DappRadar's count takes in infrastructure, guilds and the investment firms that fund the sector as well as the games themselves. In 2024 investment firms took 58% of the total, so most of the money on the chart did not go to studios making games.
Counterpoint2026
Not every token economy failed
Nexon's MapleStory Universe is a running economy of tradable tokens inside a well-known game, and two thirds of its wallets have made a transaction on the blockchain. The caveats are that the figures are the company's own and are counted in its own token.
Counterpoint2024
'Dead' can mean a crashed token
ChainPlay counts a project as dead if its token has fallen more than 90% from its peak or it has fewer than 100 daily users. Either is enough, so a game people still play counts as dead once its token has collapsed.
What to watch
2026
Whether Animoca Brands finds another way to list
A new plan from Animoca Brands to relist on a major public exchange, which it says it remains fully committed to, after it suspended its reverse merger with Currenc Group on 22 September 2026.
2027
Whether the one working token economy keeps working
Early 2027, if Nexon's blockchain arm reports its second half as it did its first. It took 30.98 million of its own tokens in the first half of 2026, about 95% of it from play inside MapleStory Universe, and now burns a fifth of each quarter's revenue.
Further reading
- ResearchState of GameFi 2024chainplay.gg
- AnalysisThe Great Reset: Your 2023 Guide to Web3 Gamesnaavik.co
- ReportingNEXPACE posts 30.98 million NXPC in first-half protocol revenueinvenglobal.com
Where to follow it Matthew Ball (who wrote the book and the post-mortems), Naavik, Digiday's Gaming Advertising coverage for brand-metaverse residue
- Streamers are spreading across several platforms
- Steam's glut is making discovery the hard part
- Governments are paying for games as culture and industry
- Apple and Google are being forced to open their stores
- Game workers are winning union contracts
- Creative workers are fighting over AI consent and disclosure
- Developers are turning against generative AI
- Regulators are forcing child-safety changes on platforms
- India has outlawed games played for money
- EU consumer authorities are going after how games sell currency
- The biggest games companies are taking a growing share of the money
- Saudi state money is buying major games companies
- Publishers are reviving dormant franchises
- Console makers are keeping games exclusive again
- Mobile live events are converging on one playbook
- AI teammates are reaching players in short tests
- Chinese studios are trying to build premium global franchises
- Gambling money is moving into games and the platforms around them
- Mobile publishers are moving payments to their own web shops
- Esports is running on Saudi money
- Game subscriptions are stalling
- Handheld gaming PCs are losing momentum