Data company Coingecko investigated failure cases in the GameFi field and found that chain games gradually became popular after 2017 and grew sharply in 2018; while their development slowed down in the bear market from 2019 to 2020, and will decline in 2021. rises again in the crypto bull market. So far, the growth of the chain game market seems to be gradually becoming stable.
How many Web3 games have failed?
Coingecko first cited data from Footprint Analytics , pointing out that in the past five years, more than 2,100 of the 2,800 Web3 games eventually died, with the death rate reaching an astonishing 75.5%.
In other words, 3 out of every 4 web3 games have inactive players.
It is reported that this study investigated 2,817 Web3 games launched from 2018 to 2023; and whether a Web3 game is active or not is based on whether its "14-day moving average number of active users" has dropped by 99% or more from the peak. More to define.
( Footprint report｜73% of GameFi projects have less than ten monthly active users )
The decline of GameFi from 2018 to 2023
After P2E (Play To Earn) pioneer CryptoKitties achieved massive success in 2017, 422 Web3 games were launched the following year, but 307 of them have long since disappeared.
Then, during the bear market contraction from 2019 to 2020, GameFi's development slowed down, but the 2-year failure rate is still as high as 94.2%.
Subsequently, the bull market sentiment in 2021 also successfully brought hot money into the GameFi industry. Although the number of failed games continued to increase, the failure rate hit a new low, only 45.9%.
However, the surge in the number of chain games has also brought more failed projects. The number of failed Web3 games doubled from the previous year, reaching a new high of 742, and the failure rate reached 107%.
Going back to this year, 509 Web3 games have failed so far, which is equivalent to 70.7% of the games launched this year. It is the lowest failure rate in the past 5 years. It can be speculated that the lower decline and failure rate may indicate that the market has gradually Stablize.
Are there any open issues with GameFi itself?
The above data shows that Web3 games face major challenges in terms of sustainability and success, and most of them fail; even if they may gradually stabilize in 2023, the historically high failure rate also highlights the fundamental risks of the GameFi project and operational difficulties.
Crypto venture capital Paradigm has also pointed out the current bottlenecks of Web3 games and the challenges they are facing in previous reports . They have also given many suggestions to chain game developers in this regard.
In previous reports, Cointelegraph also expressed the same pessimistic view as above, citing the previously discussed well-known blockchain game Illuvium as an example, pointing out that most GameFi developers focus on tokens and ignore changes in the game. And fun is what players want:
Any much-anticipated blockchain games will likely fade away.
The popularity of chain games is picking up, but can it last?
Having said that, the GameFi field has also benefited from the recent surge in market popularity. DappRadar data shows that most of the top 10 projects with active wallet transaction volume have increased in transaction volume in the past month. Coingecko data points out that currently The market value has reached US$13 billion.
In addition, the development process of the GameFi industry is still being promoted, including the launch of Epic Games' 3A masterpiece Illuvium , the newly launched Gas hero by the StepN team , and the new development game Fren Pet by Base . Many recently launched chain game projects have also been successfully launched. X (formerly Twitter) sparked heated discussions in the community and attracted many players to play.
