Yield Guild Games doubles down on play-to-earn model with $4M funding round

The Series A funding round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, an esports-focused venture capital firm. A.Capital Ventures, IDEO, CoLab, Mechanism Capital and ParaFi Capital also participated in the raise, as did several angel investors.

Yield Guild Games, also known as YGG, has received the backing of several venture firms and angel investors as it embarks on a mission to expand its network and popularize the play-to-earn gaming model. 

The $4 million cash injection will be used to invest in nonfungible token, or NFT, assets of play-to-earn games, the company announced Wednesday. YGG describes itself as a decentralized gaming guild of players who generate yield from NFT-based games.

Gabby Dizon, YGG’s co-founder, further explained the rationale behind the guild:

“At its core, YGG is a community of play-to-earn gamers. Think of it as a massively multiplayer online (MMO) guild, for example, but operating across several games, investing in yield-generating NFTs within those games, and lending those in-game assets and inventory out to our player base.”

Related: Guild of Guardians pre-game registrations hit 133K as NFT sales surge

Jens Hilgers, a founding partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, identified games and virtual worlds as hotbeds of real economic activity. “Yield Guild is serving as a catalyst to this transition with very forward-looking concepts around the novel play-to-earn game model,” he said.

Blockchain technology and gaming are two rapidly growing industries that are set to converge in more direct ways in the coming years. Globally, the gaming industry generated nearly $178 billion in 2020, according to industry data. The blockchain sector, meanwhile, continues to attract new investors, business models and use cases, as evidenced by its surging market cap. 

The play-to-earn model lends itself well to blockchain-based games that enable true digital asset ownership through NFTs. Although the play-to-earn model is possible within traditional monetary systems, it becomes harder to facilitate without the use of blockchain, cryptocurrencies or NFTs.