The developers of two games on the Ethereum gaming-centric Ronin network have announced they will no longer be operating due to difficulties in securing continued development funding.
The teams behind Realms of Alurya and Wonder Wars both shared this week that they were unable to come up with the necessary funding to continue operating their respective Ethereum-powered games.
“Unfortunately, despite all the passion and effort, we weren’t able to secure the necessary funding to develop a live service game for the coming years, and we also didn’t reach the key metrics needed to make Wonder Wars a sustainable or profitable game in the long run,” posted developer Hello Monster on X (formerly Twitter).
“For this reason, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Hello Monster, and as a result, Wonder Wars as well, since the project is no longer financially viable,” the team added.
The project will forgo launching its utility token as a result of the shutdown, adding that it “wouldn’t be honest” to launch a token without purpose, relying on pure speculation.
Realms of Alurya will also be offline in the near future, though its long-term plans are not as clear as Hello Monster’s shutdown.
The game recently migrated to Ronin after the developers said an exclusivity contract with Treasure’s blockchain—which made Treasure the publisher of its game and provided development funding grants—was abruptly ended.
Treasure recently announced that it would cease publishing games and wind down its chain amid a pivot to AI, also fueled by funding issues.
“Without any prior notice, Treasure informed us that all agreements were being terminated immediately, and with that, their support for games on their chain would end,” reads a Discord message from Realms of Alurya’s creative director and co-founder, Oscar Soler.
According to the message, the team hoped its recent Hunt & Mint event would provide it enough time to seek additional funding—but it was unsuccessful.
“We were shocked, to say the least. Our entire yearly roadmap was built around the assumption that this funding would come through,” the message said of Treasure’s alleged funding pull.
“We now find ourselves in uncharted waters,” it continues. “We screwed up relying so much on our publisher. We’ve never thought that a reputable business like Treasure could do this; that’s on us. We know now that we should have had a secondary source of funding, we’ve learned our lesson the hard way.”
Further Discord messages indicate that the game will be offline until further notice as the team investigates potential solutions going forward.
Representatives for Realms of Alurya and Treasure did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment.
The discontinuations continue a growing trend in crypto gaming in which publishers and games are ceasing operations, some due to financial constraints and others due to a lack of players—or some combination of the two.
Solana cat-shooter game Nyan Heroes shut down earlier this month due to the developer’s inability to secure funding, with Ethereum game Ember Sword following suit last week. Months earlier, Ethereum’s The Mystery Society closed its doors for the same reason.
Later, Gala Games announced the impending shutdown of its zombie-themed game, The Walking Dead: Empires, as well. And there have been other, smaller shutdown announcements in recent months, as well.
Alongside gaming shutdowns, gaming-centric tokens have been hard hit as well. Only IMX, the token for Ethereum-based gaming platform Immutable, represents the crypto gaming industry inside the top 100 tokens by market cap according to CoinGecko.
Edited by Andrew Hayward