Gaming Tokens Are Disappearing From Crypto’s Top 100—What Happened?

Crypto games have hit prominent peaks over the last year in terms of both mainstream reach and praise from gamers, but the tokens are fading fast and new ones are struggling to catch on.

Just a year ago, there were six gaming tokens in the top 100, according to the Wayback Machine. At the time, CoinGecko’s gaming tokens category had a total market capitalization of $29.3 billion. It’s down 68% to $9.24 billion today, even with more tokens launching since.

Ethereum gaming platform Immutable had been the last holdout, and its token has fallen hard over the last year. IMX was the 31st most valuable cryptocurrency in the world in December 2023, per CoinGecko, after investment firm VanEck gave Immutable a big vote of confidence, projecting that IMX would land in the top 25 tokens in 2024. Even one year ago today, it was ranked #34.

Since then, IMX is down 87% over the last year amid a broader crypto gaming cooldown and SEC investigation that the firm recent said was closed. Immutable’s token has plunged 29% in the last week alone, compared to Bitcoin at a nearly 10% dip, and was the biggest weekly loser in CoinGecko’s top 100 on Monday—until it slid out of view to its current rank of #103.

Other major gaming tokens that were once in the top 100 have also fallen hard in the last year—such as Gala Games (GALA), which is down 80% (19% this week alone), and The Sandbox (SAND), which has fallen 64% in that span (and 16% in seven days).

Those longtime coins have fallen sharply from respective peaks set back in 2021. But even big, recently launched gaming tokens are struggling. Last year’s Pixels (PIXEL) token has plunged 98% from its peak, while Notcoin (NOT) is down 94% and Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) has fallen 68%.

Last week, the GUN token tied to Gunzilla Games’ popular Off the Grid game and its Avalanche L1-based GUNZ network launched, marking the biggest gaming token rollout in months. But it’s already down 62% from the peak price, even before Gunzilla gets GUN integrated into the game.

Better games are here

Off the Grid was Decrypt’s pick for 2024 GG Game of the Year, and after making a big splash last fall, it has helped fuel perceptions that the current crop of crypto games is better than it’s ever been. It’s a big step up from the play-to-earn surge of 2021, driven by the simplistic monster-battling game Axie Infinity.

“In 2021, it was safe to say that it was purely a narrative with zero products, ignoring the top-performing ones like Axie,” pseudonymous Treeverse game founder Loopify told Decrypt. “Now, a few years later, there is actually a wide range of products, but [they] still need time and they haven’t broken into the mainstream.”

Back then, Axie Infinity led the way before its in-game economy, token, and player base took a major hit in early 2022. Now, there’s now a range of quality games, plus games that have drawn millions of players—though popularity and acclaim aren’t always overlapping attributes.

Hamster Kombat drew in 300 million players for the tap-to-earn Telegram game last summer, albeit with repetitive, rudimentary gameplay. Once the token launched in September, players griped about the price and then largely disappeared, while developers were slow to launch a follow-up season.

Off the Grid had one of the most successful public launches for a crypto game in October, becoming the top free title on the Epic Games Store—beating out Fortnite in the process. Farming game Pixels and trading card game Parallel have both drawn praise from players and cultivated growing audiences, while survival experience Crypto: The Game has been a viral, albeit niche hit.

“I actually think the state of gaming is in a solid position,” Jaxie, the pseudonymous community manager for crypto gaming clan GIA, told Decrypt. “We have great games starting to launch, which could onboard millions into the ecosystem.”

But there are misfires

Making a good game takes time—just ask Rockstar Games, which has been developing Grand Theft Auto 6 for seven years with a massive team and funding. This explains why, despite hype for crypto gaming starting years ago, we’re only starting to see the fruits of that labor now.

Equally, that has led to the downfall of crypto games that have attempted to do too much, too soon. The Illuvium franchise is a prime example. Illuvium’s token debuted in 2021 and quickly peaked at $1,749, per CoinGecko. This caused a whirlwind of hype around the project, causing expectations to be sky-high when the team released three interconnected games in July 2024.

However, Illuvium did not live up to expectations, with co-founder Kieran Warwick admitting this February that there were valid “concerns” about its gameplay amid a planned overhaul. The ILV token is down 99.4% from its all-time high to a current price of just $10.60.

“Crypto games 99% of the time just aren’t good,” Munnopoly, a pseudonymous team member behind gaming meme coin MLG, told Decrypt. “They seem to be crypto [tokens] first and games second. I think they have always been struggling to bridge the gap with Web2 gamers.”

One title that appeared poised to bridge that gap was Deadrop. With former Call of Duty and Halo developers and popular streamer Dr. Disrespect involved, mainstream gamers were paying attention as it took shape. However, the studio shut down in January as it ran out of runway following a messy breakup from Dr. Disrespect, amid allegations of inappropriate conversations with a minor.

“I think Deadrop’s cancellation was a major setback for the space,” said content creator MayorReynolds. “It was one of the few games in the space that had the long-term potential to stand on its own as a video game and implement Web3 features in a way that gamers and players could grasp.”

However, gaming projects running out of cash isn’t a rarity. Recently, blockchain gaming ecosystem Treasure announced a major restructuring and downscaling due to financial woes, and Blockworks reported last week that Neon Machine—the creator of shooter Shrapnel—is running out of money.

The makers of Ethereum game The Mystery Society suspended development on the social deduction game in February, with co-creator Chris Heatherly calling out what he saw as destructive behavior from all corners of the blockchain gaming industry.

“Greed and stupidity from just about all players is killing the space before it can prove itself,” Heatherly told Decrypt then. “We need to be focused on building healthy on-chain businesses first, and end this [token generation event]-to-nowhere ponzinomic fallacy. Every Web3 gaming founder I know is frustrated, burned out, and just doing what they are doing to try to survive—but with true conviction evaporating by the day.”

Rethinking the narrative

Part of the issue around gaming tokens lately, according to Loopify, is that investors are gravitating towards crypto assets that are more likely to flip a profit. Since the last major gaming bull run, he noted, the industry has seen waves of investment in meme coins, then social finance, and more recently artificial intelligence.

With each wave of hype that flows to another asset category, less attention is paid to gaming tokens. Such tokens remain volatile in the market, but with much sharper downswings of late.

“The narrative disappeared a while ago, [and] so did a lot of willing buyers since crypto plays [into] trends,” Loopify told Decrypt. “Even if the games were better and at a cheap price for investment in the form of NFTs, tokens, and equity—the market wouldn’t be efficient enough to price them on that straight away. It would take some time for it to reflect.”

Jaxie, however, questions if crypto games even really need a token at all. He believes that gamers only really care about owning their skins via the blockchain, not a game-specific token. Such tokens fuel speculation around projects, but the negative perception around a crashed token can rattle these communities and create impossible expectations.

“Most games shouldn’t run on their own token in the first place,” he said. “Launching a token seems to be more of a marketing tool or crowd pleaser to the current base—don’t get me wrong, I farm those airdrops too—than an actual game utility token.”

The recent wave of tap-to-earn games has seen countless tokens launched to feed each game’s necessary incentive to keep tapping. Ultimately, however, there is very little utility for the tokens post-launch, leading to them plummeting in value. It’s happened over and over again, from Hamster Kombat to Catizen and Zoo, and then some.

Furthermore, the play-to-airdrop trend that swept the industry last year again put tokens in the pockets of players with little incentive to hold onto them. Like the earlier play-to-earn craze that eventually crashed and burned, the initial buzz fueled a surge in interest and sentiment—but the downfall can be painful for projects and players alike.

“Most Web3 gamers are just crypto degens here to make money,” Jaxie said. “Most [crypto] games have a 90-day lifespan before [the] player base drops off significantly—so why build for an economy you know will have a massive population dropoff in three months?”

Edited by Andrew Hayward