"Dreambreak": A mismatched capital and player game

It's the first time I've seen it

Recently, the president of Solana Foundation, Lily Liu, wrote in X that "the game on the block chain will not return" and that the block chain game is dead。

Her judgment stems from a Polymarket post, "Meta of Mark Zuckerberg, after having destroyed $80 billion, is gradually abandoning his vision of a mesmos." While Meta's blueprint does not explicitly address block chains or encrypted assets, its strategy overlaps highly with the future as described in the Web3 chain over the past few years: the virtual world, digital asset ownership, and immersed online economies。

Even the richest players retreated, and the block chain game was once the best narrative in the encryption industry with the potential to "break the circle" – has it gone so far

The whole track collapsed: the chain was shut down

In August last year, Proof of Play released a announcement like a confession to the market in which the pirate RPG "Pirate Nation " will close in 30 days. The two exclusive block chains are down, the token prize is zero, and community players can only burn their assets in exchange for so-called "certificates," which may be useful one day, but probably not. This game studio raised $33 million two years ago, pledging to build the future of the chain。

After the announcement, the PIRATE token fell 92% in a few days. "Close Pirate Nation is one of the toughest decisions I've ever taken. But the truth is, it can never be a breakthrough mass-market work”

Pirate Nation is not an isolated example, but a fraction of the collapse of the 2025 chain。

The last year’s block chain game was declared closed. The $203 million Eber Sword game, which attracted money through NFT land purchases, was declared closed last May, and the developer Bright Star Studios simply lacked funds。

The Solana-based third-person "Nyan Heroes " , which used to be a list of aspirations of more than 250,000 PC platform players, also ended last May with a breakdown in financing, and its token, NYAN, dropped by more than 99 per cent from a high point. "Symbiogenesis" by Square Enix, the founder of "Final Fantasy", also reached its end in July。

Also, the MMORPG, which was authorized under the banner of Gala James to receive the official edition of The Walking Dead, was offline in July. The NFT-based mechanized combat game MetalCore was silent after the server was shut down in March, and the developers quietly turned to a new game on Steam that had nothing to do with the block chain。

The market has recently been most flattered by Wildcard, whose market value since March of this year was only $1.1 million, and the community generally questioned the irresponsible and soft rug. According to RootData, Wildcard had received $46 million in financing, with Paradigm taking the lead。

Paul Bettner, its founder, was involved in the development of well-known games like Words With Friends and Lucky's Tale, but today, even the top VC endorsement plus the senior gamer's drive will not stop the collapse of the entire chain track。

In addition, there are Deadrop, Blast Royale, Mojo Melee, Tokyo Bast, OpenSeason, Captain Tsubasa Rivers, each of which is backed by millions or even tens of millions of dollars in investment, the accumulation of countless game users and, ultimately, the commitment that has been lost。

Web2 players want a good game, Web3 players just want the money

Most of the founders have a real game development background, and the vision of the chain game in fund-raising is not entirely rhetorical. Why did it end at the end of the project or return to the end of Web2

"Web3 Game has built a full set of investor-driven capital structures through tokens and NFTs before validating player demand. In other words, those who finance these games, and those who ultimately need to stay in the game, were not the same people from the beginning。

When a smaller and more short-term arbitrage group of players in the chain is found in the development process, and when tokens continue to fall and development costs continue to rise, the choice of the studio is only to close or discard block-link identities to traditional markets, regardless of which the early Web3 investors and NFT holders are the ultimate purchasers。

The farm simulation, Moonfrest, is a case in point. The developer Oxalis Games raised $6.5 million and operated a Play-to-Airdrop campaign for more than a year, selling 1,833 NFT boxes at a cost of $150. Then in November 2025, the team announced that it would leave Web3 and re-link the PC game on Steam with no NFT, token or block chains。

And just the day before the announcement, CEO Ric Moore spoke in public about how to build a slow and meaningful Web3 game. The reason given by the team was, "Web3 players want to make money, Web2 players only want a good game." It took them three years and millions of real silver and silver to see the real rules。

The Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) industry report of 2025 also confirms the decline in chain travel: annual investment in block-chain games has fallen to about $293 million, down from $4 billion in 2021 and $10 billion in peaks in 2022. DWF Labs describes the current phase as "necessary replacement". Perhaps the biggest legacy of the failure of the track is the credibility crisis of the entire chain。

The BGA report shows that 36% of respondents listed "fraud, fraud, or rug pull" as the greatest threat to the industry. Even though most projects are closed without intentional fraud, from an outside point of view, the recurring cycle of "raisering, issuing, closing" is almost indistinguishable from rug pull. "This industry needs a real game developer and a real game player."

INFRASTRUCTURE AND MARKET CONDITIONS ARE SUPERIOR, STABLE CURRENCY AND AI OFFER NEW OPPORTUNITIES

THE COLLAPSE OF THE CHAIN NARRATIVE DOES NOT MEAN THAT CONSUMER-LEVEL APPLICATIONS IN THE ENCRYPTION INDUSTRY END. THE BGA REPORT SHOWS THAT 65.8 PER CENT OF INDUSTRY PRACTITIONERS REMAIN OPTIMISTIC FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS, BASED ON DELIVERABLES AND SUSTAINABLE REVENUE MODELS. AT THE SAME TIME, THE LARGE AMOUNTS OF TRANSFERS THAT STABILIZE CURRENCY PROCESSING, THE AI TOOL IS COMPRESSING GAME DEVELOPMENT COSTS TO ONE-FIFTH OF THE PAST. INFRASTRUCTURE AND MARKET CONDITIONS HAVE NEVER DISAPPEARED, AND EVEN FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF MANY DEVELOPERS, SEVERAL POSSIBLE PATHS CAN BE SEEN。

NEXPACE CEO Sunyoug Hwang, referring to MapleStory UNiverse under the banner, proposed a core principle: wallets, Gas fees, token economics are an obstacle for most players, not a subdivision. The chain of blocks should do meaningful work behind the scenes, such as achieving real asset ownership, driving the open economy, etc., and the player simply focuses on the game itself. “If the infrastructure works into the game experience, game design is a failure.”

Animoca Brands CEO Robby Yung and PLAY Network CEO Christina Macedo argue that retention rates are the only truth. Retention data for D1, D7, D30, in the age of the mainframe, in the age of mobile games, and still in the encryption industry. Macedo notes that the standard benchmark for mobile games is D1 retention 35-45 per cent, D7 15-25 per cent, D30 5-10 per cent and most Web3 games do not meet these basic health indicators at all。

The co-founder of Yield Gild Games, Gabby Dizon, argued that the failure of the industry was due to “what took too long to measure wrong”, including outdated indicators such as VC financing, token prices, NFT sales, etc. Real indicators only require that players be willing to pay because they see value in the game experience。

FINALLY, THE PRICE OF STABILITY AND THE OPPORTUNITY OF AI。

BGA reports that more than a quarter of respondents see the stabilization currency as key to industry success. Stabilized coins are more friendly and understandable to new users than volatile game tokens and are increasingly used for championship bonuses, in-play incentives and cross-border payments. Sequence further notes that smart game developers are focusing on stabilizing currency payments, and that lower fees, instant settlements and easier fragmentation, whether for chain assets or other scenarios, have a great advantage。

And AI is changing the cost structure. Simon Davis of Lighty Bear Games points out that the original AI team is exceeding the output of the traditional studios by a fraction of the cost and manpower. Animoca Brands shares the view that the key to sustainability in 2026 lies in AI-driven or AI-assisted development practices, which will radically change the economic model for producing quality game content。

The block chain game isn't dead

The core paradox of the previous cycle of chain trips has not changed: investor-driven capital structures are ahead of player demand validation. When retention rates cannot sustain the currency economy, when development costs consume financing figures, the final end of the project is to shut down or de-link the block, and the purchaser is always the early holder。

BUT THIS SHUFFLE HAS ALSO CREATED A MORE PRAGMATIC CONSENSUS AMONG GAME DEVELOPERS TO ALLOW BLOCK CHAINS TO BE INVISIBLE, TO MEASURE SUCCESS OR FAILURE IN RETENTION RATES RATHER THAN IN CURRENCY PRICES, TO REPLACE HIGH-VOLATILE COINS WITH STABLE CURRENCIES AS PAYMENT LAYERS, AND TO RECONSTRUCT DEVELOPMENT COSTS WITH AI. THE COMMON DENOMINATOR OF THESE DIRECTIONS IS TO MAKE A GAME THAT CAN STAND THE TEST OF TRADITIONAL MARKET INDICATORS, AND TO GIVE THE BLOCK CHAIN ITS TRUE VALUE AT THE BOTTOM。

The block chain game may not be as dead as Lily Liu says, but the market is really leaving the number of token-driven users until development is exhausted to the end of the old Web2 cycle。