The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Eve Frontier on Ethereum: The creator of Eve Online, CCP Games, announced on Thursday that its upcoming survival blockchain game previously referred to as Project Awakening will be rebranded to Eve Frontier—and it will be built within the Ethereum ecosystem.

The on-chain space simulator will feature multiple crypto tokens which will be issued with Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard. And it is being developed on Redstone, an Ethereum layer-2 network built with Optimism tech that is primed for on-chain, autonomous game worlds. The game's next closed beta test kicks off later this month.

Hamster Kombat + Catizen Binance giveaways: Viral Telegram tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat confirmed on Thursday that its token’s total supply will be 100 billion. Alongside this announcement, it was revealed that billions of tokens will be dropped to customers of crypto exchange Binance for participating in a Launchpool rewards campaign.

Customers in legally permitted countries (sorry U.S. folks, you’re excluded) will be able to stake Binance Coin (BNB) and the FDUSD stablecoin in the weeklong rewards campaign to earn a share of HMSTR tokens. The campaign will run from September 19 until September 26—the launch date for the token on The Open Network (TON).

The following day, Telegram game Catizen confirmed similar plans, giving away 90 million tokens (out of a supply of 1 billion CATI) in a Binance Launchpool campaign that will last from September 16-19. Also, on Saturday, Catizen revealed airdrop allocations to players and allowed them to choose if they'd like to send those tokens to a centralized exchange account once the token is generated on September 20.

Deadrop dev layoffs: Midnight Society, the game studio behind vertical extraction shooter Deadrop, confirmed last week that it had laid off a “significant” portion of its workforce—one employee claimed that 50% of staff were let go, though it's unclear how many people the studio had before the move. This comes just three months after the studio terminated its relationship with Dr. Disrespect, a popular video game streamer and one of the studio’s co-founders. 

Dr. Disrespect (aka Guy Beahm) had returned to streaming the week before with a YouTube video titled “The Truth.” In this stream, he denied allegations that he had inappropriately messaged a minor, claims that directly led to his removal from Midnight Society. This is despite previously admitting that he had had conversations with a minor that “leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate.”

ICYMI

• TON developers warned that Hamster Kombat and Catizen token launches may disrupt the network.
• Ethereum mech shooter MetalCore launched in open beta on the Epic Games Store.
• Magic Muffins game launches on Telegram trying to take on Hamster Kombat.
• Solana NFT collection Claynosaurz revealed it is making a mobile game in collaboration with Gameloft.
• The "Doom Olympics" competition kicked off across Ethereum scalers Base and Cartesi.

• Telegram game Rocky Rabbit launched its battle mode ahead of the RBTC token launch.
• Castile launched in beta on Aptos while developer Nytro Lab announced a fresh funding round.
• X Empire opened pre-market trading via an NFT traded on the Getgems marketplace, ahead of the airdrop.
• Decentralized exchange PancakeSwap launched a BNB price prediction Telegram bot.
• CARV launched a $50 million accelerator, with the first project being rising Telegram game Banana.

• Ethereum gaming network Ronin launched Waypoint, its universal account and wallet.
• Crypto gaming ecosystem Treasure is considering a move from Ethereum scaler Arbitrum to ZKsync.
• Saga, a layer-1 blockchain with a focus on gaming, launched gas-free infrastructure.
• Kugle, a virtual pet game built on Solana's Neon EVM, launched last week.
• Super Champs, an anime-inspired gaming universe, announced the launch of its layer-3 network on Base.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

Edited by Andrew Hayward