Weekly Gaming News: GameStop and Rainmaker Launch NFT Marketplaces, Animoca Finishes $75 Million fundraiser, and Magic Eden Launch Gaming Venture Arm
Welcome back to Avarta’s weekly gaming news round-up.
This was another exciting week for the blockchain gaming space as big companies joined the fray, and well-established ones continue their pursuit to bring the decentralized future to gaming!
First up, GameStop has launched its much anticipated NFT marketplace and surpassed Coinbase NFTs in sales volume in under 48 hours.
Next, we go over Rainmaker game’s new cross-chain NFT marketplace for blockchain games, Animoca’s $75 Million fundraiser and Magic Eden’s new gaming venture arm.
This week’s blockchain gaming news update will cover all this and more.
GameStop Launches NFT Marketplace and Surpasses Coinbase NFTs In Sales Volume in Under 48 Hours
GameStop has launched its much anticipated NFT marketplace this week and passed 3,000 Ethereum in sales volume in its first 48 hours.
While the gaming retailer giant passing the $3.5 million mark in sales only trails NFT marketplace leader OpenSea, the company has already passed the all-time sales volume on the Coinbase NFT marketplace.
In late 2021, Coinbase announced its NFT marketplace, seeing millions of users signing up for the waitlist. The digital asset exchange’s marketplace launched its beta in April and to the public in May. Since its launch, the Coinbase NFT marketplace has seen a sales volume of 1,704 ETH or around $1.8 million. Conversely, GameStop’s marketplace volume passed $4 million in its first three days.
GameStop’s marketplace is poised to become a significant figure within the NFT space. It will soon offer gaming NFTs, which are expected to be one of the key items and reasons for launching the platform.
Rainmaker Games Launches Cross-Chain NFT marketplace for Blockchain Games
Rainmaker Games announced the launch of a cross-chain market for NFTs for blockchain games.
Will Deane, CEO of Rainmaker, stated that the marketplace represents a new advancement in blockchain-based GameFi. With the new marketplace, gamers can explore aggregated top GameFi NFT listings from across Web3, complete with guides, strategies, and reviews.
Through Rainmaker’s new NFT Marketplace, the company hopes to empower gamers to play and invest smarter. The marketplace integrates with Rainmaker’s game discovery engine, bringing in a new, comprehensive generation that enables a frictionless experience while also delivering educational resources.
The marketplace is currently testing and sees around a thousand visitors daily. It will host about 100 games at launch on the company’s new launch pad. There are about 400,000 people in its community across various platforms like Discord, Twitter, and Telegram.
The company has already partnered with more than 60 games, and its active users are growing by about 30% monthly.
Animoca Brands Completes $75 Million Fund Raiser at $5.9 Billion Valuation to Invest in Blockchain Games
Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital company, completed the second phase of a $75.3 million funding round from earlier this year, valuing the company at $5.9 billion.
The funds raised will be used to invest in more games and advance the vision for the “open metaverse.”
Investors involved in the current tranche included Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Alpha Wave Ventures, 10T, SG Spring Limited Partnership Fund, Generation Highway Ltd, Cosmic Summit Investments Limited, and others.
Co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands Yat Siu spoke of the company’s future goals: “Digital property rights represent a society-defining generational shift that impacts everyone online and will set the stage for the emergence of the open metaverse. We are deeply honored to continue to enjoy strong support from investors as we work to solidify the leadership position of Animoca Brands in the Web3 industry and in the field of true digital ownership.”
Solana NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Launches Gaming Venture Arm
The largest NFT marketplace in the Solana ecosystem, Magic Eden, has launched a Web3 gaming investment arm.
Magic Ventures hope to build strategic investments and onboard developers into Web3 via Magic Eden’s infrastructure. To help with this newly established plan, the company has hired Tony Zhao, formerly a part of Chinese gaming giant Tencent, as its new head of gaming investments.
Zhao stated that Magic Ventures’ investments will be “purely strategic in nature” and provide support to developers of NFT-powered video games, as opposed to approaching investments with the expectation of making a return on the funds.
Zhao continued: “We’re not thinking about returns — never have and never will. It’s just to align our partnership together, right? We truly want to be the go-to partners for these developers.”
That wraps up this edition of Avarta’s weekly gaming news update.
