The studio Mythical Games, which developed the online game Blankos Block Party, has raised $ 75 million for the development of its business and the development of new projects. The company relies on so-called “playable NFTs”, allowing players to buy and sell characters created by them.Blankos Block Party
The main investor in the series “B” round was WestCap Group, headed by Laurence Tosi, a former CFO of Airbnb.
Thanks to the new investments, the total amount of funds raised by Mythical Games has reached $120 million.
“The new capital will allow us to continue moving the industry towards a new model of “play to earn” (play-to-earn). In this system, stakeholders, including players, artists, content creators and brands, directly influence the gaming economy,” says John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games.
The studio attracted the attention of investors thanks to the online game Blankos Block Party, which is available on PC in early access. Like many other modern platforms, it allows players to create their own levels and customize characters. However, its main feature is “playable NFTs”.
By this term, Mythical Games understands special tokens that are assigned to characters created in Blankos Block Party and assign the players the rights to own them. The company also allows you to buy and sell these heroes through a special platform Mythical Marketplace. According to the studio, at the moment there are over 100 thousand “playable NFTs” at the disposal of users.
Mythical Games consists of veterans of the gaming industry and former top managers of Activision, Zynga, Electronic Arts and Oculus. Before founding the company, they participated in the development of games for franchises such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero and Marvel Strike Force.
The studio plans to transfer Blankos Block Party to other platforms, as well as release new titles at the end of 2021 and in 2022. Mythical Games also promises to make a number of major announcements at the upcoming E3 exhibition.
This year, crypto-games and NFT-related projects have attracted a lot of investment. Suffice it to recall the case of the NBA Top Shot from the creators of CryptoKitties — in March, Dapper Labs raised $ 305 million. Also last month, Animoca Brands received an investment of $88.8 million at a valuation of $1 billion.
However, despite the interest from investors, at the end of May, the NFT market collapsed heavily. This happened just four months after the initial boom. NFT reached its peak on May 3, when $100 million worth of tokens were sold in one day. But soon after, there was a sharp decline.
According to the Protos publication, in the last week of last month, the total volume of NFT transactions amounted to only $19.4 million. It is also worth noting that the number of active NFT wallets has fallen from 12 thousand (as of May 3) to only 3.9 thousand.