Blockchain gaming’s deflated sentiment in Q2 2024

• Q2 saw the reversal of many of the positive trends experienced in Q1.
• All of the top gaming tokens experienced a price decline in Q2.
• Only five of the 42 gaming tokens launched in 2024 rose in value.
• Total value of investments dropped 9% to $296 million.
• Pixels experienced a 69% fall in DAUWs with the launch of its chapter 2 update. 
• Guild of Guardians and Hunters On-Chain launched on Immutable zkEVM.
• The total number of tracked games on the Big Blockchain Game List rose to 994. 

By almost every metric, Q2 2024 was a difficult quarter for the blockchain game sector.

The price of all major gaming tokens declined. Only four tokens – RON, SUPER, MYTH and YGG – ended the quarter in positive territory for 2024 year-to-date.

Similarly, of the 42 gaming tokens that launched in 2024, only five – YAKU, UDS, BLS, PIRATE and MAVIA – were up compared to their first tracked price. The average performance of these 42 tokens by the end of June 2024 was a decline of 41%.

Except for the number of deals tracked, investment into the sector was also weak. During Q2 2024, there were 77 new deals, bringing the H1 2024 total to 153, up 128% compared to the previous six months.

However, the combined value of these investments declined, with a total of $296 million announced for Q2, compared to $324 million for Q1 2024. The half year total of $620 million was down 5% compared to H2 2023.

One reason was the majority of deals were token pre-sales, attracting small crypto-only funds and retail investors. As the quarter continued, the lacklustre performance of 2024-launched tokens deflated sentiment, further reducing the ability of projects to raise funding.

Even well-established projects experienced this softness, with the largest single announcement in Q2 being The Sandbox’s $20 million convertible note. In contrast, its last public funding announcement was a $93 million raise at a $500 million valuation in November 2021. The convertible note has a $1 billion valuation cap; a small multiple given everything that has occurred over the past two and a half years.

Yet there were signs of progress. The sector continues to expand in terms of newly announced titles. The Big Blockchain Game List added 157 new titles and discontinued 104, resulting in an all-time high total of 994 tracked games.

Immutable remains the single largest blockchain in terms of publicly announced projects and its newly-launched Immutable zkEVM blockchain was a bright spot in terms of increasing activity. It surpassed four million active accounts on a cumulative basis, with daily peaks of over 350,000 active wallets.

Q2 2024 also saw the launch of Immutable’s Guild of Guardians mobile RPG, which was downloaded from app stores over 600,000 times, gaining 250,000 active players and a peak of 15,000 DAUWs. The most popular onchain game on Immutable zkEVM was Boomland’s Hunters On-Chain, which launched its play-to-airdrop campaign, attracting around 60,000 active wallets.

However, the trajectory of the most popular blockchain game Pixels was a warning not to take raw data at face value. Following an all-time-high of one million daily active unique wallets in May, its chapter 2 update in June reset the game’s reward mechanics, which also had the impact of breaking bot accounts. Pixels’ daily activity dropped to around 250,000 DAUWs.

Despite this, and the declining value of its PIXEL token, Pixels remained the most popular blockchain game in terms of daily activity.