The inaugural Gam3 Awards hosted by Polkastarter Gaming is approaching fast. CryptoSlate is now able to reveal the official nominees for each category. For example, Illuvium from Immutable X has been shortlisted for five awards, including Game of the Year. Further, equally impressive, Big Time from Big Time Studios is up for four awards and is also included in the Game of the Year category. Omar Ghanem, Head of Gaming at Polkastarter, remarked on the level of engagement from the judging panel. “ A 100% voting participation despite the task at hand with over 100 game titles to go through, is f ..read more

Renowned blockchain gaming firm, Cross The Ages (CTA), has announced Square Enix, a role-playing video gaming company, as a strategic investor in its project.  Square Enix, with this development, joins the growing list of investors, including Ubisoft and Animoca Brands, who have embraced the gaming project. With the addition of Square Enix, CTA will work on its development program, talent retention, and marketing of its first fun-to-play blockchain game, as mentioned in the press release shared with CryptoSlate. “We believe the future of Web3 gaming will revolve around rewarding those pl ..read more

The creator of Magic: The Gathering card game Richard Garfield has launched a new Player versus Player game for the non-fungible token project, Blockchain Brawlers, according to a press statement shared with CryptoSlate. Blockchain Brawlers is a play-to-own game based on the WAX blockchain, created by Tyranno Studios. Adding a new PvP card game will increase the project’s appeal. Getting Garfield to design the new game is a remarkable feat, given his achievements in the Web2 gaming space. Garfield is the architect of the fantasy card game “Magic: The Gathering” and was responsible for the deve ..read more

Reddit may have cracked the formula for onboarding new users into web3, according to a new report released by DappRadar on the behavior of the blockchain industry. Further, 94% of adults with “discretion to household money” are now aware of cryptocurrencies. The report stated: “The ease of onboarding new users to the world of NFTs by Reddit could be seen as one of the biggest events for Web3 this year.” Reddit’s new digital collectible avatars are NFTs based on the Polygon network, but very little education or marketing material was released by Reddit referencing the blockchain technology be ..read more

Levan Kvirkvelia from on-chain analytics platform Cluster reached out to CryptoSlate to share his findings from analyzing over one hundred “web3 services.” Cluster, which is still in beta, analyzes data from critical blockchain services, including user retention, bot activity, and active user numbers. The platform currently supports Polygon and BNB Chain. The data from Cluster revealed that over the 100+ projects reviewed by Cluster, only five had seen an increase in user base year-on-year. However, an area within crypto that stood out was web3 gaming, where use retention was three to seven ti ..read more

After a late-summer rally, the crypto markets pulled back in September, bringing many metrics related to the health of the GameFi industry down with it.  The amount of volume passing through GameFi protocols reached historic lows Investment still remained sideway Very few new GameFi projects were launched On the other hand, the number of active GameFi users jumped, largely due to arcade app Arc8 on Polygon and, to a lesser extent, several smaller projects on BNB.  However, even well-performing projects in September did not see large increases in their token prices. The market cap o ..read more

Move-to-earn gaming company STEPN (GMT) on Oct. 13 denied claims of laying off staff. A spokesperson from STEPN reached out to CryptoSlate to clarify the rumors of layoffs. The spokesperson stated: “We deny the rumor that STEPN has been laying off staff due to the bear market. These are baseless claims that are factually inaccurate. We pride ourselves in being transparent with our community and we are choosing to address these rumors head-on to avoid any further speculation on falsehoods.” News on layoffs News about STEPN layoffs was published on Oct. 12 by the Twitter account Wu Blockchain ..read more

Move-to-earn gaming company STEPN (GMT) will lay off over 100 of its staff, including MODs and ambassadors, according to WuBlockchain, who cited community sources. STEPN’s parent company, Find Satoshi Lab, will also reduce investments in STEPN to focus on promoting itself and upcoming new projects, like the new NFT exchange platform, Find Satoshi Lab is building. The majority of GMT simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) will also be unlocked in March 2023. STEPN in trouble STEPN pointed at the current bear market as the reason for layoffs. Even though it announced that it received a ..read more

Gensokishi, the Japanese web3 MMORPG based on the Nintendo and Playstation 4 game Elemental Knights, was up 26% in September amid a rebrand. The project has repositioned itself as the GENSO metaverse, with the game now being a part of a larger metaverse. The native token, MV, hit a low of $0.20 on Sept. 19 before soaring to $0.26 on Oct. 2. The project had a successful closed beta earlier in the year and is ramping after the second beta launch on Sept. 30. Players will be able to convert mROND earned during the open beta into ROND at the end of the event. mROND is the in-game token, an off-ch ..read more

Korean-based blockchain Klaytn has launched an initiative to allow Web3 gaming companies to build on its network to offset gas fees for gamers. Unlike traditional games, gamers in Web3 need to purchase cryptocurrency to pay for gas fees before playing a game. Moments of high network activities such as the OtherSide NFT mint have seen gas fees on Ethereum spike to as high as $3,000 per transaction. Klaytn announced on Sept. 28 that it will provide gas fee rebates for gamers and developers building on the network. Klaytn will offer up to $100,000 worth of KLAY tokens to cover gas fees for g ..read more