In brief
- Crypto gaming has experienced a growing trend of games and studios shutting down.
- Game creators are struggling to find funding to complete development, among other commonly cited issues.
- Once-promising blockchain games like Deadrop, Nyan Heroes, Ember Sword, and Pirate Nation top the list.
While crypto gaming has long been seen as a key use for blockchain, letting gamers really own and freely trade their unique items and perhaps profit from a game’s success, developers are struggling to sustain their games and digital economies.
Some games, like Gunzilla Games’ Off the Grid, have punched through to a broader audience, gaining adoption from top streamers and gamers alike—albeit ahead of full blockchain integration. But many other games and studios building with tokens are struggling to find players and maintain funding.
In 2025, a number of once-promising crypto games have already closed up shop, and the list has been growing recently with each new week. Here’s a look at some of the biggest games to go offline or shut down entirely.
Deadrop
Deadrop game developer Midnight Society announced that it was closing shop in January. The studio, which had previously removed co-founder Dr. Disrespect in 2024 after alleged misconduct, gave employees just two days notice, according to an employee post on X.
The extraction shooter game spent around two years in early access, selling players NFT access passes on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, as well as other non-NFT items that ultimately became useless. In March, players started rallying around the abandoned community Discord, helping each other secure refunds via credit card chargebacks and bank reversals by claiming the product was never fully delivered.
Ember Sword
Ethereum game Ember Sword at one point received more than $200 million in pledges for an NFT land sale, conveying the level of hype around metaverse gaming land NFTs in 2021. But the final sale brought in much less than that, and in May, the game was ultimately shut down.
Developer Bright Star Studios cited a lack of funding in its closing announcement—a common theme among crypto games ceasing development of late. The MMORPG entered closed beta last July and early access later in the year, but drew criticism from players. After moving chains multiple times in search of a permanent home, it’s since gone offline.
“We explored every possible way forward. But in today’s market—where even some of the most promising projects are shutting down—we couldn’t find a path to keep building,” the project said.
Nyan Heroes
The Solana cat-mech shooter game Nyan Heroes ended its run in May, as well.
The game, which had racked up more than 250,000 wishlist additions across PC gaming platforms, was unable to secure the necessary funding to complete development and push ahead with its planned full launch next winter.
Its closure rendered its NYAN Solana token useless, plummeting its value to more than 99% off its all-time high established in 2024.
“It’s been a difficult last few months,” 9 Lives CEO and Creative Director Max Fu told Decrypt following the announcement. “Currently, we are exploring acquisition of the studio and/or the IP. Some discussions are underway, but I suspect it may take some time to finalize a decision.”
Realms of Alurya
A funding issue also signaled the end of the line for Realms of Alurya. The game, which was initially expected to launch on Treasure’s blockchain, was forced to migrate to the Ethereum gaming-focused sidechain Ronin as Treasure pivoted to focus on AI initiatives.
The developers claimed in a message to its community that Treasure unexpectedly cut grant funding that was expected along developmental milestones. Without that funding, the studio said it was no longer able to complete its roadmap, and has yet to secure additional backing. In late June, the studio confirmed that the game was done for good.
Symbiogenesis
Final Fantasy creator Square Enix brought its Ethereum-based blockchain game Symbiogenesis to an end in July.
The browser-based narrative game, which has links to multiple Ethereum scaling chains, like Arbitrum and Polygon, was first announced by Square Enix in 2022 and billed as a “digital collectible art project,” offering multiple chapters and quests to players in a new continent set in the sky. Just recently, the game did a crossover promotion with a couple games on Sony’s new Ethereum layer-2 network, Soneium, but the end was still set in stone.
Unlike other games which have been forced to fold due to a lack of product market fit or funding, the Symbiogenesis roadmap has been intentionally designed to end in July 2025 as the storyline comes to its conclusion. And to be clear, Square Enix has ample resources to keep a game like this live, making this an anomaly on this list; maybe the game just ran its course.
The story centered around the Floating Continent of #SYMBIOGENESIS will officially come to an end on July 31.
Access to the official website and game service will be terminated at 12:00 PM (JST) on July 31.
Since its announcement in November 2022, SYMBIOGENESIS has carried out…
— 【EN_Official】SYMBIOGENESIS | SQUARE ENIX (@symbiogenesisEN) July 28, 2025
The Mystery Society
The Mystery Society, an Ethereum game that blended vibes of the casual Among Us game with murder mystery, suspended operations in February.
The game’s developer, Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, was unable to find the funding necessary to complete the game, despite having previously raised $3 million.
The game first launched on Polygon before migrating to gaming-centric scaling chain Immutable in late 2024.
After the announcement, the game developer’s CEO Chris Heatherly told Decrypt that “greed and stupidity from just about all players is killing the space before it can prove itself.”
Raini: The Lords of Light
Hearthstone-style card-battling game Raini: The Lords of Light shut down its online services for good in July, Raini Studios announced in late June, marking a new era for the studio as it pivots to a pair of upcoming games.
The Lords of Light, which had NFT assets minted on Ethereum and Avalanche, and an RST token on Avalanche L1 network Beam, leaned into crypto culture and humor for its tradable digital cards, which included subjects such as FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Elon Musk, and even Dogecoin.
Raini paid out 2 million worth of RST rewards (about $3,300 worth) to players in June and July before Lords of Light shut down. Going forward, the studio plans to launch a pair of action-oriented games—Lucha Throwdown and Uncaged: The Jon Jones Brawler—with a new focus on deflationary tokenomics, including buying and burning RST with a percentage of studio revenue.
The Walking Dead: Empires
Gala Games’ zombie-themed MMORPG The Walking Dead: Empires also found its way to the graveyard. The Ethereum game, which was officially licensed from the AMC show The Walking Dead, was playable through the end of July.
“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to sunset The Walking Dead: Empires, with the last playable date set for July 31, 2025,” wrote Gala Games in early May.
The game challenged players to craft weapons and build bases to protect themselves from the undead, at one point commanding major price tags for its NFTs on the secondary market. As compensation for the game’s shutdown, players will get mystery boxes filled with NFTs from other games published by Gala.
MetalCore
Mech shooter MetalCore closed its game servers and Discord community in March, ending communications with its community as developer Studio 369 makes “important changes to the game.” The official X post on the matter even restricted replies to only those that the MetalCore account follows.
Thank you to all the mercs who joined us for the Battlegrounds event! 🫡
MetalCore servers and Discord channels will be down as we make important changes to the game. Thanks for your dedication and support—stay sharp, we will return soon!
— METALCORE | Let’s #PlayMetalCore! (@playmetalcore) March 25, 2025
The game, which is still listed as available in the Epic Games Store, started on Ethereum layer-2 network Immutable zkEVM, but began a migration to Solana last October. But no updates have come since that March 25 announcement, despite a mention in the post that the team will “return soon.”
It appears that Studio 369 has moved on to a new project, launching the fantasy game Noble Legacy in early access on Steam—apparently without crypto features, given the PC gaming platform’s ban on such features.
Blast Royale
The developer of mobile game Blast Royale signaled its discontinuation in mid-May “after exploring every path and possibility,” it said.
The creators of the battle royale-style game, which had a collection of Ethereum NFTs, open-sourced its code on June 1, allowing anyone in the community to pick up where they left off and further develop and modify the game. But otherwise, the game closed to players on June 30.
With a heavy heart, we confirm the news about Blast Royale’s closure. Thank you to our amazing community for being part of this journey. Please see the attached community statement shared by @Renny0x last week. pic.twitter.com/2iAv0VSGZg
— Blast Royale (@blastroyale) May 16, 2025
The game’s NOOB token will still be distributed and trade freely on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 built by Coinbase, but it has plummeted more than 99% from its all-time high price.
Mojo Melee
One of the latest additions to this list is Mojo Melee—the NFT-fueled auto-battler game in the vein of Teamfight Tactics. We went hands-on with Mojo Melee back in 2023 and enjoyed it, and the game subsequently held a promotion with Amazon to give out free in-game assets to Prime subscribers.
But now developer Planet Mojo is closing up shop, making a pivot to AI with plans to launch a movie-making platform. Mojo Melee and the studio’s WWA platform for AI gaming agents shut down on July 1.
It is with deep regret that we announce that Planet Mojo is officially sunsetting on July 1. Thank you to everyone who played, supported, and built with us. You can read our full message to the community here 👇 pic.twitter.com/2B0OGQzN57
— Mojo AI 🌱 (@WeArePlanetMojo) May 30, 2025
“While we’re incredibly proud of how far these projects came and and the passionate community that grew around them, shifting market realities have made it unsustainable to continue developing them at the level they deserve,” the studio said in a Discord message cross-posted to X.
OpenSeason
OpenSeason, a Fortnite-style battle royale game with loads of crypto meme references, had launched on the Epic Games Store and seemed promising. But the game is now offline after developer Fractional Uprising Studios faced funding issues, and the affiliated FU token cratered in price.
Pseudonymous co-founder Krypticrooks confirmed the move to Decrypt in early July, noting that the “server costs are too expensive” to have the game online at the moment, and noting the they faced challenges in developing the game while supporting community demands over the token price.
They’ve gone on to instead launch Booby Bot, a crypto-fueled gambling game with AI-generated nudity.
Tokyo Beast
Tokyo Beast barely had a chance to live before it died, with developers speedrunning the crypto gaming lifespan and announcing the imminent demise of the game just weeks after it launched. The makes of the mobile combat game announced the news in July, following the June 9 launch, with the servers shuttering on August 24.
There was good news amid the disappointment, however, with the developers revealing plans to compensate buyers of Tokyo Beast NFTs on Ethereum layer-2 network Immutable zkEVM, as well as people who had staked the associated TGT token.
Pirate Nation
Pirate Nation, a role-playing game with all assets and game logic put on-chain, had endured for a couple years, even amid a transition from Polygon to Arbitrum to cut costs. But in August, developer Proof of Play said that the game will be shut down in favor of the team launching bite-sized games using chunks of the overall experience.
Like many other games on this list, the devs cited high costs to support the game with a small user base. Proof of Play will continue building on-chain infrastructure and says it’ll support the PIRATE token, which is down 92% from its peak as of this writing.
“Shutting down Pirate Nation was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever been part of,” Adam Fern, co-founder and product lead, wrote on X. “I love Pirate Nation and I spent nearly seven days a week for the past three-plus years on it, but the truth is it wasn’t ever going to be a breakout, mass market success.”
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on May 31, 2025 and last updated with new details on August 27.
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