Animoca Brands to bet big on MMORPG blockchain games

In less than a week, Animoca Brands has acquired two major video games publishers: Eden Games and Darewise Entertainment.

Animoca Brands, the parent company of The Sandbox, added Eden Games to its portfolio on Tuesday. Eden Games is a publisher of popular racing games including the Gear.Club and Test Drive series. Animoca hopes this acquisition will enhance its REVV Motorsport ecosystem of blockchain-based racing games on Polygon.

On Wednesday, Animoca announced it is acquiring Darewise Entertainment, a Paris-based game studio founded by former Ubisoft executives and other AAA games industry veterans. Darewise is currently developing a new play-to-earn (P2E) massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, called Life Beyond. Animoca Brands agreed to a 70% stake in Darewise Entertainment, according to VentureBeat.

Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, laid out some of the reasons for the acquisition in a Twitter thread. 

1/ Incredibly excited to announce that the incredibly talented team at @Darewise creators of the #AAA #MMORPG @LifeBeyond and expert builders of online worlds is joining the @animocabrands fam a quick as to the reasons #NFT #blockchaingames https://t.co/LWLJ4gvQCA

— Yat Siu (@ysiu) April 13, 2022

Siu cited one of the main factors as the collective experience of the team behind Darewise in franchises such as Assassin’s Creed and The Division. Life Beyond, which is about an alien planet plagued by battle, is being built on the Unreal Engine and is currently in closed alpha. He said to “expect many collaborations, partnerships and interoperable experiences + highest level of quality.”

According to the company, Life Beyond intends to “empower players to make decisions both on an individual level via their own play choices as well as collectively by making critical decisions on the future direction of the game.”

Related: Fortnite creators Epic Games raise $2B from Sony and LEGO to fund metaverse plans

On Thursday, Darewise announced via Twitter that it had purchased a Bored Ape Yacht Club nonfungible token (NFT) named Franck. The details of the “support” for BAYC members and ApeCoin help have not yet been revealed.

At Darewise, we strongly believe in the Open Metaverse philosophy. Creating bridges between communities.

We are starting today by supporting the @BoredApeYC and @apecoin holder in our project! pic.twitter.com/KLHQ64Q0iU

— Darewise (@Darewise) April 14, 2022

Additionally, Animoca Brands recently co-led a $5 million seed round for the P2E mobile game Blast Royale with investment firm Mechanism Capital. First Light Games is the developer behind Blast Royale and other well-known games such as Monument Valley, Fable, Street Fighter and Tomb Raider.