In 2025, just in the first half of the year, 17 Web3 games have already announced shutdowns.
Ember Sword, Nyan Heroes, Tatsumeeko... these star projects, once backed by tens of millions in funding and high expectations, have now fallen one after another.
The reasons given by development teams are mostly similar: a sluggish market environment, sharply increased difficulty in fundraising, and severe user loss—but what these reveal is a systemic imbalance in the Web3 gaming industry.
Blockchain games are not the first sector with a high mortality rate.
According to CoinGecko data, among 2,817 Web3 games launched between 2018 and 2023, 2,127 have "died," with a failure rate exceeding 80%. ChainPlay further points out that 93% of project tokens have dropped more than 90% in price, with an average lifespan of only four months. Burned-out funds, player attrition, and token bubble bursts create a negative feedback loop. Once token incentives are overdrawn, the community falls silent.
These problems are not unique to blockchain. The traditional gaming industry also faces high attrition, with an 83% death rate for mobile games within three years. The difference is that when traditional game crowdfunding fails, most players only lose their pre-order payments; when a Web3 game "dies suddenly," investors face the painful evaporation of real money and total asset loss.
More realistically, so-called NFT-based game assets do not truly belong to players. Once the development team halts or servers go offline, these NFTs lose their meaning even if re-registered on-chain. The narrative of cross-game "asset interoperability" is appealing but practically unsolvable in design and implementation—no developer will rebuild rules and experiences for someone else’s NFTs.
Another dilemma for Web3 games is that they have neither successfully sustained the Play to Earn model nor built genuinely playable, fun, and retainable content systems. Most developers launch token systems too early, leading to inflated expectations and imbalanced gameplay. Meanwhile, as AI and RWA become the new favorites of capital, the financing window for Web3 games is also tightening.
To escape the graveyard, Web3 games must return to fundamentals: games must be "fun" first, incentive mechanisms must support a sustainable ecosystem, and teams need long-term development capabilities. Discussing asset ownership or interoperability narratives without these is just an illusion.
GameFi is not a complete failure; it just hasn’t found its true vitality yet.
The next bull market may not belong to blockchain games; but if it does, it will definitely come from content that truly makes players want to stay.