Well-known studios closed down, where is the future of blockchain games?

Gyro Finance news, on September 14, 0xGames, a well-known blockchain game studio from Cyprus, announced that it has decided to shut down due to financial problems. It will end the sales of in-game props this week, and plans to open source its games and transform them into community autonomy.

According to public information, 0xGames was established in December 2017, and previously announced that it was committed to creating an interstellar universe on the blockchain.

0xGames

It is reported that 0xGames has previously developed three blockchain games 0xUniverse, 0xBattleships, and 0xWarriors, and the market has responded well. In particular, the studio's first game, Ether StarCraft 0xUniverse, has achieved good results since its launch. It has always been ranked among the top blockchain games and has been supported and loved by many players.

However, according to the 0xGame team blog information, the team began to encounter financial difficulties in 2019, and also sought EOSIO support to no avail. After that, they turned to the Tron team for help again, but the other party not only failed to provide sufficient support as agreed, but still owes 0xGames part of the funds. In addition, investors decided to withdraw their capital, so 0xGames had no choice but to declare bankruptcy.

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On September 14th, the official team of 0xGames released a blog post "A Difficult Decision", announcing that due to financial problems, it decided to close the studio, and that it will also end the sales of in-game props this week, and plans to open source its games and transform them into community autonomy, as follows Follow Gyro Finance to sort out the overall context.

In 2017, Sergey Kopov, the founder of 0xGames, began to notice the blockchain technology. At that time, a game called CryptoPunks showed that this technology could be successfully applied to games, allowing the creation of new game mechanics. It is very valuable in the game market. The success of CryptoKitties later showed that blockchain games can attract a lot of attention.

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At this time, Sergey met an investor who was also interested in this emerging market segment and thought it had great prospects. Together, they agreed to do a pilot project and form a team, and that's how the 0xGames studio came about, and that's how the development of 0xUniverse started.

In the first 6 months, Sergey managed to gather the team and release the first version of 0xUniverse. As a result, the team has received a steady flow of funds from investors, and Sergey insists that the team should focus on the growth of audience and brand value instead of caring about profits, because soon the audience of blockchain players will grow substantially, and profits will not be a Questions to consider. Under this premise, the team thought about the roadmap of 0xUniverse, and began to plan the production of new projects based on the accumulated experience.

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The second half of 2018 has been very productive for the team. The team participated in various meetings, shared experiences, and communicated with other developers, attracting more like-minded people to join the team. With their help, the team created and built new games one after another: 0xUniverse: Battleships, 0xWarriors and 0xRacers.

According to the team, the team was very confident at the time, and they believed that investors would provide the necessary funds to allow them to carry out four projects at the same time. In addition, they began to develop the 0xFramework platform, expecting it to become a reliable technical foundation, and also the basis for the team to plan to attract future projects and investments as a publisher within a few years.

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The success of 2018 did not carry over to 2019, although 0xUniverse continued to be updated and players were growing rapidly. Even in March 2019 the game was already more popular than CryptoKitties, but then the team encountered its first difficulties.

Although 0xUniverse has brought some successful experience, on the other hand it proved that Ethereum was not suitable for running blockchain games at that time. So 0xGames began to consider the multi-blockchain architecture, but the team said that trying to cooperate with other public chains is not so ideal. For example, the team spent a lot of time contacting EOSIO, but did not contact its developers and did not get their support. Later, the team contacted the Tron team, who was friendly at first and promised to provide market and financial support. But in the end, the Tron team reneged on their promises. Not only was the relevant marketing support minimal, but they also owed the 0xGames team some money.

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But to make matters worse, the audience of blockchain games did not grow as expected by the team’s investors, and the number of players remained at the same level. In addition, Facebook Libra and Telegram TON, two revolutionary blockchain projects, have also failed due to various reasons. In addition, the Facebook advertising platform continues to ignore blockchain games, and other channels have no effect on the team.

Along with these failures, the team's relationship with investors began to sour, and the team no longer received regular funding.

This forced the team to freeze parts of the development plan, as well as change the main goals set last year. According to the team, the main goal in 2019 is no longer growth, but to reach the breakeven point as soon as possible.

Since then, the 0xGames team has focused on improving 0xFramework, hoping to make a game that can be played as easily and conveniently as possible for casual players who are not familiar with blockchain technology.

By September 2019, things started to take shape.

The team began to buy ads targeted at casual players on Facebook, and the first experiment can be said to be relatively successful. The team attracted players to the 0xUniverse Android version at a relatively low cost, which was very helpful to the team, because at that time the team's funds were exhausted. At the same time, the team also reached an agreement with investors to continue financing and began to expand the scale of the advertising campaign.

According to the team's estimates, the team should reach the break-even point by the end of the first quarter of 2020.

However, in December 2019, the investor notified the 0xGames team that he would no longer be able to support the team, and the team had to return the remaining funds in the account at that time. As a result, the team ushered in a new 2020 with no money but debt. According to the team, they don't know the reason why the investor made this decision. It is speculated that the investor's key project may have encountered problems, and he decided to concentrate all his time and resources on it at all costs.

At the same time, due to the high load and huge Gas fees brought by projects such as DeFi, Ethereum has actually stopped some work since May 2020. Players cannot continue to play 0xUniverse, and the previously planned transition to Matic has been continuously postponed. The situation becomes more complicated.

Only the emergence of new investors can save the team's company, and the team conducts many negotiations. However, another transaction failed last week, and it is no longer possible for the team to maintain the current state.

So on September 14th, the 0xGames team had to admit that the team company and project had little chance of being saved. While the team had their minds on 0xGames, it will now have to be shut down. But that's not the worst, because the team knew in advance that game development is a risky business and not every project will be successful.

Although the studio announced its closure, the 0xGames team has decided to turn the project into open source and into an autonomous state. All functionality, including player-to-player transactions, will continue to function and commissions collected will be used for escrow. In this state, as long as player interest remains, the team will maintain the project as long as possible.

At the end of the blog, the 0xGames team expressed that it is still full of hope and will continue to look for investors.

After experiencing the cycle of enthusiasm and doubts, 2020 is indeed difficult for blockchain games. Not only has the number of players declined severely, but the popularity seems to have long since disappeared.

How to prove oneself and how to break the situation are inescapable problems for practitioners.

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