Delabs Games pivots to midcore games on Telegram and TON

Another web3 game developer is making the leap to Telegram and TON. This time it’s South Korean outfit Delabs Games, which is sprung out of 4:33 Creative Labs. 

In a statement published on X, Delabs CEO Joonmo Kwon explains his belief in Telegram as an increasing foundation for web3 games. No stranger to messaging apps, he refers to his experience with South Korea’s largest messenger app commenting, “I’ve personally already experienced this whole cycle where messaging apps grow to become game distribution platforms with Kakaotalk.”

4:33 Creative Labs was once the top developer and publisher on Kakao Games, with 3 titles ranked number one in terms of top-grossing games. Kwon thinks the success is due to 4:33 bringing mid-to-hardcore games to Kakaotalk, while most developers were still focusing on causal games.

As a result, Kwon is confident that we’ll see gaming on Telegram move beyond the “current meta of hypercasual to casual mini-games”. Delabs Games intends to be a forerunner in what it calls a very short opportunity to bring midcore games “with proven IPs” to market via Telegram and TON, starting with mobile sports game Boxing Star, which gained traction under 4:33 Creative Labs.

Initially deploying its flagship title Rumble Racing Star on Polygon, the company announced a complete game portfolio migration to Arbitrum earlier in 2024. With this latest change of strategy however, its been announced that the team will halt the development of Space Frontier and Metabolts.

Of course, this has triggered some concerns from the community, questioning whether Delabs has sufficient funding, especially as Space Frontier “should be in the ending stages and launching in Q4.”

Although no value has been revealed, Delabs has revealed it has gained new investments from TON Foundation and private investor Noah Kim to support its transition.

To provide more clarity, Kwon has also pointed out that the Delabs Adventure Pass NFTs will continue to bring benefits within the new Telegram games. As for the Metabolts NFTs, they will be revamped with new utility, and the forthcoming token allocation will not be diluted.