Top 8 Blockchain Gaming Companies in 2024

Seeing the way blockchain is increasingly being used in the gaming industry, we can safely say that it has carved a niche for itself. With this proliferation, the number of blockchain gaming companies has also increased manifold. In the article, we have curated a list of top companies (based on their technical know-how, blockchain expertise, types of games, and popularity) that are making waves in crypto-based games niche.

To understand the nuances of crypto-based games, we recommend you read this article on Blockchain Gaming.

Blockchain Gaming Companies That Are Making Waves

1. Dapper Labs

Everyone in crypto gaming knows about Crypto Kitties, thanks to Dapper Labs. It all started in 2017 and with this game, this company laid the foundation stone on which the wall of blockchain gaming was erected. Soon, the company forayed into the arena of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Known to be built for real people, this company uses a blockchain called “Flow”: the network over which you can enjoy experiences and trade collectibles and NFTs; these can be used in the real world.

According to Crunchbase, the total funding amount raised by Dapper Labs till November 2021 stands at a staggering $621M with the last being a venture round that raised $5.14M. The popularity of the company was bolstered with Fast Company naming Dapper Labs as one of the most innovative companies of 2022 for introducing normies to web3. It also boasts of having 1.6M users with total sales of 1.2B. Isn’t this data gorgeous!!

The company has created some very popular crypto-based games like NBA Top Shot, UFC Strike, NFL All Day, and CryptoKitties (which is Play-to-Earn crypto gameplay). With these sport-based games, you, as a gamer, can play games along with earning money and capturing your favorite sports moments.

Games by Dapper Labs

NBA Top Shot: Dapper Labs did a blockchain gaming partnership with NBA (National Basketball Association) and NBPA (National Basketball Players Association) to develop the NBA Top Shot game.

This became hugely popular as it allowed players to capture their favorite sports moments and own them. Say you are a die-hard fan of the moment when LeBron James blocked Andre Iguodala in less than two minutes of the game of the 2016 NBA Finals. This moment is very dear to you. Top Shot is the platform that would allow capturing such historical moments and owning them. See the original LeBron Moment.

Once you have a moment, you can also trade to exchange it with other gamers and get some real money.

UFC Strike: It is another popular game by Dapper Labs. UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is a MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) promotion company that showcases fighting events across the globe.

You, as a player of the UFC Strike game, can not only capture the moments of your favorite athletes in action but can view memorable video clips from the most famous fights. The game lets you own NFTs of these video and audio highlights.

UFC Strike allows players to buy such NFT moments on its marketplace where you can buy, sell, and trade them with others. On the Market Place, you can search for your favorite fighter and view your favorite piece of action and buy it.

2. Sky Mavis

This user-first, community-based company lets you play games, own virtual assets, and buy or sell these assets in its Market Place. Its breakout game, Axie Infinity, has remained popular ever since it was launched in 2018.

Hub, its blockchain gaming launchpad lets developers build blockchain games and raise funds for the same. Sky Mavis created its own blockchain called Ronin that helps developers scale the number of daily active users of its games. In terms of NFT sales by volume, Ronin is beaten only by Ethereum. It is on Ronin that all the Axie infinity assets are stored.

Games by Sky Mavis

Axie Infinity: According to an article by Active Player, the number of active daily players on Axie Infinity stands at about 24192.

The characters of this turn-based card game are called Axies that love to fight and win battles for treasure. (Quite human, ha!!). The game for the players is to collect these Axies (a team of three Axies is required) and make them battle against other Axies.

An Axie could be either a Starter or Personal. The beginner gamers get their starter-Axies named Buba, Puffy, and Olek, which are non-NFT Axies. The Personal Axies can be purchased from Market Place and can be even bred with each other to give birth to more of them.

The hallmark of each Axie is its 6 body parts: eyes, ears, tail, horn, mouth, and back, each of which imparts a unique ability to fight in the game. To play, you can download any of its three versions: Origin, Homeland, and Classic. And you can play one of the two modes: Adventure or Arena.

In July 2021, Axie #2655 became the most expensive Axie ever sold in the game when the player Lunacian #585021 purchased it and paid a staggering $800,000 for it!!

3. Immutable

Immutable a layer 2 scaling gaming blockchain company that helps developers build highly secure web3 games. Immutable provides a blockchain where one can not only build games from scratch but also scale them to accommodate more players.

You can mint and deploy your own NFTs here. Being a layer2 solution, Immutable processes the incoming transactions quicker than layer 1 (Ethereum) while taking care of the security of these transactions. This results in a higher throughput at a lower cost.

Immutable hosts an NFT Market Place where users can showcase their assets and trade their NFTs. Playing games on Immutable allows users to be the real owners of their assets. The developers can rely on their expertise to create games that can seamlessly integrate with the web3 gaming industry.

Games by Immutable

The most popular games on Immutable are Gods Unchained and Deviants Factions. We covered these in another article on Immutable. Some other popular gaming platforms built on it are Illuvium, Ember Sword, and Block Lords.

Illuvium: It provides an interoperable blockchain gaming world, the first of its kind in the web3 industry. On Illuvium, you can play several sci-fi or adventurous games, and visit alien lands. It has a studio and a DAO. It creates highly usable and functional NFTs.
Ember Sword: This is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that is built on Immutable. In this, a player either plays against a number of other players (PVP or People vs People) or against the game itself (PVE or People vs Environment). The player assumes a character and owns the virtual assets that s/he uses in the adventure games. The game is designed to be played in different fictitious nations with different territories.

4. Gala Games

This company is built on a node-based system and is known for hiding the blockchain elements from the players so that they can focus more on the play rather than on the technology.

Like other blockchain gaming companies, Gala Games transfer the right to ownership of digital assets to the users. These assets can be used to play games and trade with other gamers and can be verified on-chain.

The ecosystem is based on player-run nodes, i.e. the players can run nodes on their system. In fact, these gamers can participate in the voting system also; a mechanism by which they can vote for the games to be included on the platform and how these can be funded.

In 2021, Gala Games was in the news for entering into a Blockchain Gaming Partnership with Frank Miller, the director of the movie Sin City. Along with Concept Art House, this company created NFT collectibles based on the movie. This was for celebrating the 30^th anniversary of the comic book (which goes by the same name as the movie ) created by Miller.

Games by Gala Games

A few popular games that this platform provides are Echoes of Empire, Dragon Strike, Eternal Paradox, and Spider Tanks.

Dragon Strike: It is a Role Playing Game (RPG) based on solving puzzles. It is a match-3 game built on blockchain and needs you to identify patterns and match identical items.

A player in Dragon Strike aims to create an empire and launch powerful strikes. It has heroes and dragons and has a PVP element added to it. On fancy lands, you need to create matches and use them to slay your enemy monsters.
Eternal Paradox: This new game is a popular 4X Strategy based on the underlying principles of a 4X game: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. The aim is to build and expand empires by defeating enemies.

It is a turn-based RPG that has all the elements expected from a sci-fi thriller: you have castles, buildings, battles, missions, and guilds. In March 2023, Gala Games came out with a playtest for the game where winners were awarded in-game currency called GEMS.

5. Double Jump Tokyo Inc.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, this is another MMORPG game where a number of gamers participate together and play against one another. The company was established in 2018 and develops blockchain-based games and NFTs for enterprises.

As per the Crunchbase data, Double Jump Tokyo has, so far, done 6 rounds of capital funding and has raised a total of $25.9M. The last round was venture funding that took place in June 2022 and helped the company raise $664.4K.

Games by Double Jump Tokyo

My Crypto Heroes: Yet another MMORPG that can be played on a smartphone. It ranks number 1 in terms of transactional volume. The game’s motive is to send heroes to dungeons where they can collect items (also called material). These items are used to create Extensions NFTs that impart more power to your heroes.

The NFTs can also be traded with other players. The game can be played in various modes: in the Quest mode, you are playing against the environment (the game itself) and receive materials as a reward.

In Duel Cup and Colosseum modes, you play in PVP mode. Then you have Knight Battles (players are selected from each of the 9 lands) and Cryptid Wars (A Group vs Group game against taking down the enemies that are already residing in forts).

6. The Sandbox

If you have played a blockchain game, you probably have heard about the Sandbox. It is a Metaverse-based game where participants can search their favorite virtual land, buy it, and customize it the way they like.

They can then sell it to other interested parties. The game is built on Ethereum and has been the talk of the town for the unique and amazing experiences it provides. Buy land and then add more value to it by converting it into different spaces like cultural centers, showrooms, stores, sports arena, and more.

Each Land is an NFT that can be traded with others. You can take part in games and host cultural, social, and fashion events in Metaverse. Since its manifestation, the Sandbox has attracted big brands to host their events and showcase their products to all. Users get rewarded for playing games and developers for building them.

It provides a VoxEdit tool that lets users create NFTs, which can be then sold in a Market Place. You can also create 3D models which you can rig and animate. It follows a no-code approach for developers to build games without any cost. This Metaverse has attracted names and brands like Paris Hilton, Snoop Dog, Warner Music Group, Hell’s Kitchen, Ubisoft, and Adidas, to name a few.

To start playing, first, you need to download the Sandbox Client on your workstation. Then, you can create an account and register yourself using a web3 wallet, Gmail, or email. Upon registration, you are free to select the active games to play.

7. Yuga Labs

This list of Blockchain Gaming Companies would not be complete without mentioning Yuga Labs, the creator of the immensely famous Bored Ape Yacht Collection (BAYC)- the flagship product of the company.

In 2021, Sotheby conducted a sale of Yuga Labs’ collection of 101 Bored Apes, which fetched $24M!! Each of the BAYC Ape represents an NFT.

In its initial days, the company minted 10,000 apes and all got sold out in no time. Seeing the grand reception and interest, the company came out with Apes’ companions – a collection of 10000 dogs (called Bored Ape Kennel Club).

Later, it acquired the Intellectual Property rights of not only its own Bored Apes but also CryptoPunks and Meetbits, the characters developed by Larva Labs. As per these rights, all the holders of the CryptoPunks were offered IP licenses.

I tried creating a CryptoPunk-inspired character, just for fun!!

A CryptoPunk-Inspired Character by the Author

8. World of Ether

This web3 gaming company goes by the tagline: Collect, Breed, and Battle. This decentralized blockchain gaming company offers dueling games for its users. The characters of the game are called Etherians and there are 205 of them.

If you visit their website, they have created a Woedex (sort of index ) for these Etherians, each with a description and the mystical powers it carries. These playable characters offer the players a unique PVP experience.

The Etherians have been broadly classified into 5 categories: sun, life, death, astral, and ocean. The aim of the game is to collect monsters on the blockchain. And render them more powerful to fight against your enemy monsters.

These monsters can be sold to other players. You can exploit 4 distinguished traits: common, uncommon, rare, and legendary. The World of Ether also lets its gamers join different factions and go against the others and steal their tokens. Being in a faction allows you to breed Etherians of their types. Being carried out on blockchain, all the transactions in the game are verifiable on-chain and secure.

Conclusion

There are a plethora of web3 gaming companies that are trying to make it big in the blockchain industry and many of them have already done so. More and more enterprises in web 2 have come to the realization that crypto-based gaming is the next big thing and therefore, they are looking forward to foray in this industry.

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and is NOT a financial advice. We do not promote, in any form, any NFTs, crypto games, companies, wallets, cryptocurrencies or tokens mentioned herein. The content of this article is based on the information available up to the knowledge. You should be aware that investing in any NFT or company or wallet or cryptocurrency or blockchain project or crypto game is subject to market risk and you MUST do your own due diligence (DYOR) before you put any money in any of these games, companies, NFTs, wallets, coins, or tokens.