The new platform tackles the distribution bottleneck for vibe-coded games, debuting alongside a 4-week global, virtual game jam powered by a Game Designer AI Agent from Minds by Animoca Brands.Yield Guild Games (YGG) has officially announced the launch of vibecode.game, a premier editorial and discovery destination for vibe-coded games, the fastest-growing category in browser gaming. To celebrate the launch, YGG is partnering with Minds by Animoca Brands (“Minds”) to host the vibecode.game X Minds by Animoca Brands Game Jam. Kicking off on July 13, 2026, the global, virtual four-week competition serves as the inaugural event of VibeBlitz, a game jam series hosted by vibecode.game. This first installment marks the public release of Minds’ specialized "Game Designer Mind," a personal AI agent that helps game creators overcome game design hurdles and rapidly ship playable titles.
Vibe coding has unlocked an era of frictionless creation, enabling anyone (regardless of coding skills) to build games, with agents assisting in critical decision-making. According to a 2026 report by MarketsandMarkets, the AI code assistant market is projected to surge from $8.14 billion in 2025 to $127.05 billion by 2032. However, a 2026 Naavik Digest study highlighted that despite agentic AI fueling a 77% surge in mobile game releases, commercial success rates have remained flat. While the production time, costs, and skills required to create a game have plummeted, discoverability, player attention, and customer acquisition remain the primary obstacles to growth.
vibecode.game directly addresses these obstacles, acting as a permissionless launchpad where any creator can publish a game, find an audience, and build a community. It features curated rankings, reviews, developer profiles, guides, and game discovery, allowing community validation to determine what rises to the top. Together, vibecode.game and YGG’s community-driven infrastructure own the vibe-coded games category, from a creator’s first build to a player’s discovery.
“vibecode.game is the ultimate discovery portal for vibe-coded games, and game jams are the perfect way to bring content, creators, and the community together,” said Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG. “Partnering with Minds by Animoca Brands will make sure that anyone can learn, experiment, and publish a game, no matter their level of experience.”
Animoca Brands became an early seed-round investor in YGG in 2021, and the two companies share a history of lowering barriers to entry in digital economies. This partnership brings that shared vision directly into the AI era. While vibe coding tools greatly simplify code generation, many creators still struggle with core game design decisions, mechanics, and balance. To bridge this gap, Animoca Brands developed the Game Designer Mind, a type of specialized persistent AI agent that acts as a co-creator, turning a user’s one-line prompt into a fully designed, balanced game concept. Users can design game systems using their Game Designer Mind on its own or combined with other AI tools.
“The synergy between Minds and YGG centers on digital empowerment and making game creation fun and accessible to all,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. “Vibe coding has democratized coding, but great games still require great design. By putting the Game Designer Mind in front of YGG’s builder community, we are removing the final creative hurdle. Creators can now instantly brainstorm, refine, and balance their games using our persistent AI agents, then publish them on vibecode.game to tap into an immediate player base.”
vibecode.game x Minds by Animoca Brands Game JamThe global, virtual game jam is designed to showcase the ability and opportunity to create games by combining AI agents with rapid game development and permissionless web publishing. It features a prize pool of $2,500 in Minds platform credits and $2,500 in $YGG tokens.
The event will run from July 13 to August 10, 2026:
July 13 to July 27, Build Phase: Creators sign up, use the Game Designer Mind AI agent alone or in conjunction with any other AI coding tools of their choice, and submit their completed games on vibecode.game.July 27 to August 2, Community Voting: The global player community plays the submitted titles on vibecode.game and votes for their favorites.August 3 to August 9, Judging Period: Final evaluations will be conducted by an expert judging panel consisting of Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG, and Mo Ezeldin, VP of Animoca Labs. Winners will be announced on August 10, 2026.To support builders during the game jam, a live Game Design Masterclass workshop will be held on the official YGG Discord server on July 16, 2026, at 21:00-22:00 GMT+8. Hosted by the game jam judges themselves, this practical session will demonstrate how builders can use the Game Designer Mind to streamline their creation workflows, refine their economics, and maximize their chances of winning the competition.
How to Participate:
Register: Sign up for the game jam from July 13 to July 27 via the official event page at vibecode.game.Access the Tools: Visit the Minds website at hellominds.ai to activate your personalized Game Designer Mind companion (select “Game Designer” in “One-Click Minds”).Build and Submit: Use the Game Designer Mind to design your game mechanics and code the game using your preferred prompt-based pipeline. Upload your entry by July 27 via the event page.
Information about the vibecode.game X Minds by Animoca Brands Game Jam is available at https://vibecode.game/game-jams/vibeblitz-x-minds-by-animoca-minds-hackathon.
ABOUT YGG
Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a global collective of gamers, creators, and builders turning play into opportunity. Known for pioneering the Web3 guild model, YGG is developing systems for digital coordination where skill is verifiable, contribution is visible, effort is valued, and rewards are shared. Today, YGG is positioned at the center of the AI data economy where the demand for specialized data types is just beginning to scale. Because real human data is vital for training AI models, video games act as the perfect testing grounds where YGG’s community can generate these behavioral datasets just by playing.
ABOUT MINDS BY ANIMOCA BRANDS
Minds by Animoca Brands (“Minds”) is a personal AI that starts with a single message on Telegram or email. No hardware, no setup, no technical knowledge needed. Your Mind remembers your context and picks the right tools for each job, handling the work that usually scatters across various apps, from sorting out your week to launching an online store. You can share a Mind with a friend, a team or across organisations to help you coordinate and stay ahead of your tasks. Unlike the tools you use today, it never resets: the more you use it, the more useful it gets, and the more it becomes attuned to you. To learn more, visit hellominds.ai.
ABOUT ANIMOCA BRANDS
Animoca Brands Corporation Limited (ACN: 122 921 813) is a global digital assets leader building and investing in impactful technologies and ecosystems to reimagine future economies through AI and the agentic web. It has received broad industry and market recognition including Fortune Crypto 40, Top 50 Blockchain Game Companies 2025, Financial Times’ High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific, and Deloitte Tech Fast. Animoca Brands is recognized for building digital asset platforms such as the Moca Network, Open Campus, Anichess, and The Sandbox, as well as institutional-grade platforms; providing digital asset services to help Web3 companies launch and grow; and investing in frontier Web3 technology, with a portfolio of over 600 companies and digital assets. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or follow on X, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok.
Crypto gaming company Yield Guild Games says it has shut down its crypto game publishing arm, YGG Play, and will instead focus on feeding data to artificial intelligence.
Yield Guild Games said Monday that it would also lay off 35 employees, adding that a prolonged crypto market downturn and a “similarly brutal” video game publishing market meant YGG Play “cannot be commercially sustainable.”
It said a major market crash on Oct. 10 “fundamentally altered retail market psychology, and we do not expect the crypto consumer market or the Web3 games publishing market to recover sufficiently in the near term.”
The layoffs add to the more than 5,000 jobs that crypto companies have cut this year, with many citing a crypto market slump and a refocus toward opportunities presented by artificial intelligence.
“Sunsetting YGG Play is a heavy decision, but it is a market decision, not a product decision,” Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon said. “I am proud of what this team achieved under such tough conditions.”
Source: Yield Guild Games
Yield Guild Games said it would be closing YGG Play’s website, its web app that launched games and its community-focused rewards site. It would also end all marketing support for third-party games.
The company’s board game-style browser game LOL Land and its puzzle game Waifu Sweeper would also be taken down. The Web3 versions of the baseball game GIGACHADBAT and the battle game Ragnarok Breaker would continue as normal.
The company said sunsetting YGG Play and its restructure would extend its operating runway to four years, adding it had $20.6 million in its treasury as of the end of the first quarter.
Yield Guild pivots to AI dataYield Guild Games said it would refocus its resources “into the AI data economy” to provide information that can be used to train AI models.
It will initially create a pipeline for gaming datasets, and said its global community “can generate these behavioral datasets just by playing.”
The company said it was “an organic next step” and the data would help AI networks understand “human irrationality and emergent behavior,” as video game players “constantly make complex, split-second decisions.”
More than 5,000 crypto layoffs in 2026The crypto industry has cut over 5,000 jobs so far this year, with Block Inc. undertaking the largest round of layoffs in February by cutting 4,000 staff, or about half its workforce at the time.
Last month, crypto infrastructure company BitGo laid off 15% of its staff, an estimated 90 people, while Robinhood cut 10% of its workforce.
Earlier in the year, Kraken laid off 150 workers, and Coinbase cut 700 employees. Gemini also laid off 200 employees in February and Crypto.com cut about 180 staff a month later, both citing the use of AI.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Crypto gaming company Yield Guild Games says it has shut down its crypto game publishing arm, YGG Play, and will instead focus on feeding data to artificial intelligence.
Yield Guild Games said Monday that it would also lay off 35 employees, adding that a prolonged crypto market downturn and a “similarly brutal” video game publishing market meant YGG Play “cannot be commercially sustainable.”
It said a major market crash on Oct. 10 “fundamentally altered retail market psychology, and we do not expect the crypto consumer market or the Web3 games publishing market to recover sufficiently in the near term.”
The layoffs add to the more than 5,000 jobs that crypto companies have cut this year, with many citing a crypto market slump and a refocus toward opportunities presented by artificial intelligence.
“Sunsetting YGG Play is a heavy decision, but it is a market decision, not a product decision,” Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon said. “I am proud of what this team achieved under such tough conditions.”
Source: Yield Guild Games
Yield Guild Games said it would be closing YGG Play’s website, its web app that launched games and its community-focused rewards site. It would also end all marketing support for third-party games.
The company’s board game-style browser game LOL Land and its puzzle game Waifu Sweeper would also be taken down. The Web3 versions of the baseball game GIGACHADBAT and the battle game Ragnarok Breaker would continue as normal.
The company said sunsetting YGG Play and its restructure would extend its operating runway to four years, adding it had $20.6 million in its treasury as of the end of the first quarter.
Yield Guild pivots to AI dataYield Guild Games said it would refocus its resources “into the AI data economy” to provide information that can be used to train AI models.
It will initially create a pipeline for gaming datasets, and said its global community “can generate these behavioral datasets just by playing.”
The company said it was “an organic next step” and the data would help AI networks understand “human irrationality and emergent behavior,” as video game players “constantly make complex, split-second decisions.”
More than 5,000 crypto layoffs in 2026The crypto industry has cut over 5,000 jobs so far this year, with Block Inc. undertaking the largest round of layoffs in February by cutting 4,000 staff, or about half its workforce at the time.
Last month, crypto infrastructure company BitGo laid off 15% of its staff, an estimated 90 people, while Robinhood cut 10% of its workforce.
Earlier in the year, Kraken laid off 150 workers, and Coinbase cut 700 employees. Gemini also laid off 200 employees in February and Crypto.com cut about 180 staff a month later, both citing the use of AI.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Yield Guild Games will shut down YGG Play, its crypto game publishing arm, after deciding the business is no longer commercially sustainable.
Summary
Yield Guild Games is cutting 35 jobs and closing YGG Play after weak gaming demand. YGG will focus on gaming datasets for AI after extending total runway to four years. The shutdown adds to crypto layoffs as firms shift resources toward automation and AI products. The company blamed weak crypto market conditions and a difficult video game publishing market.
YGG said the Oct. 10 market crash changed retail trading behavior and reduced the liquidity that many consumer crypto apps need. It said Bitcoin later fell below $60,000, while several altcoins lost 80% or more from prior levels.
The company said YGG Play had shown early traction before conditions worsened. It signed nine games, worked with intellectual property brands such as Pudgy Penguins, launched a publishing platform, and passed $9 million in lifetime revenue by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
35 staff affected by restructuring The shutdown will affect 35 workers across different teams. YGG said it would help those employees find new roles and invited companies to contact it for hiring referrals.
Today, we are sharing some difficult news with our community: after much consideration, we have made the decision to sunset @YGG_Play, YGG’s publishing arm.
Our team set out to prove the Casual Degen gaming thesis, and they absolutely delivered. However, the realities of the… pic.twitter.com/36w410DmNR
— Yield Guild Games (@YieldGuild) July 6, 2026 The company will retire the YGG Play website, launchpad, and community rewards platform. It will also stop marketing support for third-party games. LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper will be taken down, while GIGACHADBAT and Ragnarok Breaker will continue through their own studios.
“Sunsetting YGG Play is a heavy decision, but it is a market decision, not a product decision,” said YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon.
He added that the company remains focused on using technology to create economic opportunities.
Sad news today – we are sunsetting our Web3 game publishing unit @YGG_Play, and 35 jobs will be affected as a result. We're committed to paying 8 additional weeks for our team to manage the transition and will help them find new roles.
YGG Play games – @LOLLandGame @waifusweeper… https://t.co/gzpaG98KwQ
— Gabby Dizon | YGG (@gabusch) July 6, 2026 Company turns toward AI data YGG said it will now move resources into the AI data economy. Its first focus will be a business-to-business pipeline for gaming datasets that can help train AI models.
The company said games can produce useful data because players make fast and complex decisions during play. YGG said its global community can help create behavioral datasets by playing games and completing related tasks.
YGG also pointed to its AI Alerts channel, formerly YGG Alerts, as part of the new direction. The company said the channel has already brought in 27,000 applications in its first five days by connecting Filipino workers with remote AI training jobs.
Crypto and gaming layoffs continue The move adds to broader job cuts across crypto and gaming. As previously reported, Kraken cut about 150 jobs as AI tools took on a larger role across the exchange. Coinbase, Gemini, and Dune also reduced staff this year while reshaping operations.
In addition, BitGo cut nearly 15% of its workforce while shifting focus toward security, trading, stablecoins, settlement, and AI infrastructure. The cuts showed how crypto firms have continued to review costs after weaker market conditions.
The web3 gaming sector has also faced pressure. As previously reported, blockchain gaming activity fell in 2025 as user numbers dropped, funding slowed, and hundreds of gaming apps went inactive.
YGG said its treasury stood at $20.6 million at the end of the first quarter. It held $6.2 million in stablecoins, T-bills, and large-cap tokens. The company said the restructuring extends its operating runway to four years.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
In brief Yield Guild Games is sunsetting its crypto game publishing arm, retiring its website, launchpad, and games like LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper by Aug. 1. The firm said the crypto market downturn left the business commercially unsustainable, with 35 jobs to be cut. YGG is pivoting to the AI data economy, aiming to supply gaming-derived behavioral datasets for AI training. Yield Guild Games, a blockchain-based gaming organization, announced Monday that it is shutting down YGG Play, its publishing arm for crypto-infused casual games, citing the crypto market downturn alongside broader video game industry struggles.
The unit's closure marks a retreat from a strategy the Web3 company had championed as recently as this year: building "casual degen" games—bite-sized titles laced with crypto incentives—for crypto enthusiasts who don't consider themselves traditional gamers.
YGG Play launched its own original game LOL Land as a proof of concept and had signed nine additional games, partnered with the Pudgy Penguins NFT brand, and debuted a token launchpad, reporting more than $9 million in lifetime revenue through the first quarter of 2026.
However, the broader crypto gaming industry has struggled in recent years, with numerous prominent blockchain-based games shutting down since early last year and investors steering clear of crypto game studios. And that’s not all: crypto prices have also plummeted since late last year, with Bitcoin down nearly 50% from its October peak, while the traditional video game industry has faced mass layoffs—including from Xbox on Monday.
Given the current market environment, the team said it made the decision to shutter the publishing division, cut 35 jobs as a result, and give Yield Guild more runway as it pursues an AI-driven pivot.
"Sunsetting YGG Play is a heavy decision, but it is a market decision, not a product decision," said Yield Guild co-founder Gabby Dizon, in a statement. "I am proud of what this team achieved under such tough conditions, and what they built is a testament to their talent and dedication. Although this business unit is sunsetting, YGG's vision and mission hasn't changed. We are still fully dedicated to using technology to open up new economic opportunities for people globally."
Sad news today - we are sunsetting our Web3 game publishing unit @YGG_Play, and 35 jobs will be affected as a result. We're committed to paying 8 additional weeks for our team to manage the transition and will help them find new roles.
YGG Play games - @LOLLandGame @waifusweeper… https://t.co/gzpaG98KwQ
— Gabby Dizon | YGG (@gabusch) July 6, 2026
The YGG Play website, its launchpad, and games including LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper will be retired by August 1. Two of the games on the platform, Gigachatbat and Ragnarok Breaker, will continue operating under their original developers, following a transition.
YGG said it will redirect its resources toward supplying data for artificial intelligence training, wagering that video game players' decision-making can generate valuable behavioral datasets for AI developers. The company reported a treasury of $20.6 million worth of assets as of Q1, which it said should extend its operating runway to four years following the restructuring.
Yield Guild Games was one of the standout companies of the 2021 play-to-earn boom, as a prominent organization that supported the growth of monster-battling game Axie Infinity via a “scholarship” program—a profit-sharing program that lent out NFT assets to players in exchange for a cut of their in-game token earnings. Yield Guild secured funding from VC giant Andreessen Horowitz in August 2021 amid the crypto gaming surge.
After Axie Infinity’s economic collapse in 2022 and the broader decline of the play-to-earn movement, Yield Guild pivoted in 2024 into launching blockchain infrastructure for guilds across various crypto games, before launching YGG Play in 2025.
Yield Guild’s YGG token is up about 4% on the day at a recent price of $0.023, but has fallen about 84% in the last year. It remains down 99.8% from its peak price of $11.17 set in 2021.
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Yield Guild Games (YGG), the web3 gaming guild that pioneered play-to-earn gaming, is sunsetting its game publishing arm YGG Play, affecting 35 jobs, co-founder Gabby Dizon said on X Monday. YGG will pay departing staff eight additional weeks during the transition and help them find new roles,…
Yield Guild Games (YGG), the web3 gaming guild that pioneered play-to-earn gaming, is sunsetting its game publishing arm YGG Play, affecting 35 jobs, co-founder Gabby Dizon said on X Monday.
YGG will pay departing staff eight additional weeks during the transition and help them find new roles, Dizon said. YGG Play's games, including LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper, and the YGG Play platform itself, will stay live until July 31 before going offline. GIGACHAD BAT will move to delabs Official, while Ragnarok Breaker will continue under Planetarium HQ, according to Dizon's post.
YGG's official account confirmed the decision separately, framing it as "a market decision, not a product decision" driven by "the realities of the broader macroeconomic climate" rather than any failure of YGG Play's "Casual Degen gaming thesis." The unit built the YGG Play Launchpad and worked with major IPs before its shutdown, the company said.
What's Next For YGGGoing forward, Dizon said YGG will operate with a smaller team, returning to its original model of working directly with its gaming community, and expanding into a new line of business: selling player-generated training data to AI labs. The company described its future as a continuation of its "play-to-earn roots, but in a different form."
YGG built its brand during the 2021 P2E boom around Axie Infinity scholarships and later diversified into a broader publishing business as the play-to-earn model cooled, a shift The Defiant covered as the guild weathered previous bear-market pressure.
The YGG Play unit's closure marks the guild's most significant restructuring since that period, cutting a division built to publish original web3 titles rather than manage token-based guild scholarships.
Yield Guild Games, the web3 gaming guild that helped popularize the play-to-earn model during crypto’s last bull run, is pulling the plug on its game publishing division. Co-founder Gabby Dizon announced on X that YGG Play will be fully offline by August 1, with 35 employees losing their jobs in the process.
What happened and what’s next YGG Play launched in 2025 with aspirations to bring casual web3 gaming to the masses. The division branded its approach as the “Casual Degen” model, targeting players who wanted lighter gaming experiences with on-chain elements. Titles like LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper were part of the portfolio, and the division also operated a game launchpad while partnering with third-party studios.
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Dizon cited unsustainable commercial conditions within the broader macroeconomic environment as the reason for the shutdown, even while noting that YGG Play had succeeded in delivering on its product vision. Purchases on the YGG Play platform were disabled as of July 9, and the full shutdown is scheduled for August 1. Select titles tied to third-party developers, like GIGACHADBAT, will continue operating independently of YGG’s infrastructure.
For the 35 departing employees, YGG is offering eight additional weeks of pay during the transition period along with assistance finding new roles.
YGG’s pivot to AI data Rather than simply retreating to its original guild model, YGG is making a notable strategic pivot. The company plans to refocus on two areas: community-driven play-to-earn projects, and generating AI training data derived from gameplay.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Each and every story begins with a memorable scene or a unique setting.
For Web3 gaming in the Philippines, that scene played out in countless Filipino homes during the pandemic: students and workers, confined by lockdowns, discovered they could earn and build value together.
What started as a curious blend of gaming and crypto would later explode into a cultural phenomenon.
But this was just the proverbial testing ground. Fast forward to late 2024, the scene has matured far beyond those early play-to-earn days.
While the initial gold rush may have cooled, something more substantial has taken root. The Philippines, which served as ground zero for this experiment in digital economies of scale, has maintained its position as the world's most engaged market for Web3 gaming for three consecutive years.
Pioneers through the yearsNow, Yield Guild Games (YGG), which pioneered the guild model that mobilized thousands of gamers into communities, is scaling its vision beyond gaming.
In an exclusive interview with Decrypt, Yield Guild Games’ Founder Gabby Dizon spoke with the easy confidence of someone who's watched a wild idea grow into a movement.
"We've always had guild communities as part of YGG since day one," explains Gabby Dizon. "First we started with Axie [with] the scholarship program, then we expanded to other games and added questing and reputation on top of that."
It is with this early model that YGG conceptualized Onchain Guilds, a platform that enables collectives to build and manage their reputation through verifiable records of their work and achievements on the blockchain.
Whether you're a gaming team, an artist, or a group of content creators, the platform provides tools to track contributions, manage shared assets, and access opportunities across YGG's network of partners.
Think of it like LinkedIn meets Discord, but with actual proofs of what you've achieved.
"The reputation is onchain for everyone to see," Dizon notes, explaining how groups can now build trackable histories of their accomplishments. "It's inscribed in your wallet, so you own it, not a social network or any other platform."
Home baseThe Web3 guild protocol announced today at the YGG Play Summit that its Onchain Guilds platform will launch on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer-2 network.
Designed to enhance transaction speed and reduce costs while maintaining the security and decentralization of Ethereum, Base was developed using the Optimism Stack.
The L2 enables developers to deploy decentralized applications more efficiently while allowing users to interact with the Ethereum ecosystem at a significantly lower cost.
This matters particularly in the Philippines, where Web3 gaming isn't just a hobby—it's a serious economic force and a life source for those earning an average yearly income between $3,000 and $12,000.
The country has been at the top of global rankings for web3 gaming interest for three years, with a staggering 96% crypto awareness rate, according to research from ConsenSys. Through YGG Pilipinas alone, the community counts 1.2 million members across social platforms.
And this is growing fast because YGG's vision extends beyond gaming, it told Decrypt. Earlier this year, YGG launched its Future of Work division, exploring how these same tools could help freelancers, content creators, and even AI data labeling teams organize and build reputation collectively.
"People are starting to do things like data labeling for AI companies, contributing data for deep end networks that will allow them to earn money," he explains. "I think that a lot of the transactions online will eventually move onchain."
Base's decision to wrap up its global tour in Manila—after stops across Latin America, Africa, and India-–showcases the Philippines' role as a Web3 frontier market. The platform's “buildathons” have been creating a buzz in emerging economies, where digital ownership and verifiable credentials are touted as game changers.
Digital sportsFor community members actively participating in its popular Guild Advancement Program, YGG offers staking as a way to boost questing rewards, with plans for broader participation mechanisms tied to casual gaming by early 2025, Decrypt was told.
Reputation, Dizon notes, is a core feature of human interactions. Whether back in Web2 or even offline, when one speaks of or interacts with a person or a group, how they come to be known, based on what they do or have done, often opens how others perceive them.
Drawing an analogy to traditional sports teams, Dizon explains how reputation works for Onchain Guilds.
"If you think of the L.A. Lakers, they have a certain reputation. They've had different members over the decades, but the team itself maintains its reputation: they've won championships, they have a win-lose record collectively."
In a way, the launch of Onchain Guilds on Base feels less like a product release and more like a coming-of-age moment for Web3 communities. As Dizon aptly puts it, with the characteristic optimism of someone who's seen the future arrive ahead of schedule: "This is just a natural evolution of our mission."
This, Dizon believes, is what YGG's Onchain Guilds is building for digital communities—a platform where they could earn and build value together leveraging blockchain technology.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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If there's anything that competitive gaming could teach us, it’s that early setbacks don't determine future outcomes.
A substantial rally is building among top gaming tokens, with The Sandbox (SAND) leading gains.
Its token, SAND, has seen a jump of more than 32.3% over the last 24 hours, bringing its price to the $0.8 level. It's also showing signs of strong momentum, with a 7-day increase of 26.2%, CoinGecko data shows.
The numbers are more telling when compared over a longer time period: SAND is up 131% over two weeks and 243% over the past month.
The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based metaverse game platform. In May, the game launched its own DAO, enabling token holders to decide what matters for the game and its on-chain economy.
“Gaming tokens are the backbone of the Web3 gaming ecosystem,” Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games, told Decrypt. “People hold gaming tokens because they believe in the potential of Web3 to redefine gaming,” Dizon added.
Notably, demand for SAND brought in over $880 million worth of trades over the past 24 hours, an increase of 88% from its previous day, according to historical data.
Bouncing back
Earlier in June, Decrypt reported how gaming tokens were among the hardest hit in the crypto market as Bitcoin and Ethereum rallies cooled down.
Over 30% of these games were discontinued as 2024 started, and the sector later suffered major losses after the Bitcoin halving.
Despite these drawdowns, gaming tokens have maintained a significant following.
According to a Dune dashboard based on research by independent data analyst PanteraFi, SAND has a 13.4% market share for its GameFi Index, which tracks games across decentralized platforms.
“The use case for gaming tokens is about ownership. Players can own their digital assets, trade them freely, and have a say in the direction of the games they play. It’s about aligning incentives between developers and players, so everyone benefits,” says Dizon.
Gaming sector makes a pushBack to numbers, CoinGecko data shows that the intraday changes in volume for SAND has cooled down from November 25, which was when the trading for the asset jumped from $523 million to $5.2 billion overnight. Over the same period, the price also lept from $0.4 to $0.7.
Meanwhile, the native token belonging to Decentraland (MANA), a blockchain gaming ecosystem, has also risen higher on the day, up 17.5% at the time of writing.
Gala Games (GALA), another blockchain gaming ecosystem, also saw its token rise 21.8% over the last 24 hours. That coincided with GALA’s trading volume, which swelled 65.8% to $977 million and clocked a market cap of just over $2.1 billion.
Axie Infinity's AXS token has also shown remarkable strength, recording an 21.1% gain and reaching $9.29 — its highest price point in eight months. This comes after the game development studio behind it, Sky Mavis, announced a layoff for 21% of its staff and confirmed that it's working on a new game.
The AXS token's market cap now stands at $1.4 billion, supported by a healthy 24-hour trading volume of $472 million. The broader gaming governance token market has also seen modest movement, with the total market cap increasing by 6% to $5.4 billion.
“The games that come out on top this cycle will be the ones that are able to target and onboard value-adding communities at scale,” Dizon noted.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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Oasys, a game-optimized blockchain platform with key partnerships including Ubisoft and Yield Guild Games, has secured another major collaboration through a deal with Animoca Brands Japan.
The gaming-focused blockchain announced on Dec. 17 that Animoca Brands’ Japan subsidiary had made a direct investment in Oasys and will also join as a new validator. As part of the partnership, Oasys will leverage Animoca Brands’ traction to expand its presence in the Greater China region.
“Through this partnership, we aim to bring game developers and users around the world more innovative experiences advancing the blockchain gaming market,” Ryo Matsubara, Oasys representative director, said.
Animoca Brands, a leading Hong Kong-based web3 company, leverages blockchain technology to bring digital property rights to consumers. The company’s metaverse and gaming portfolio has grown to include over 540 projects, featuring top industry players such as Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Polygon, Axie Infinity, and OpenSea.
By securing this partnership with Animoca Brands Japan, Oasys joins a group of leading platforms and projects benefiting from Animoca’s role as a gateway to web3 gaming adoption. This collaboration will help Oasys explore further growth opportunities in Japan and globally.
The Oasys mainnet went live in October 2022, and over the past few years seen greater adoption. The platform scored investment from SBI Holdings, 1999, Japan’s largest financial firm. The deal with the tradfi giant isn’t the only hit in the sector.
Recently, Oasys netted a deal with Ubisoft, the video game studio behind Assassin’s Creed, Brawlhalla, and Far Cry. Ubisoft announced its foray into web3 gaming with an upcoming game launch on Oasys.
Yield Guild Games, a community network for Web3 gaming, reportedly has partnered with OORT, striving to reinvent the landscape of decentralized AI. This alliance aims to utilize community-generated data power to instruct Next-gen AI models. This strategic move is set to boost the human-aligned and inclusive AI ecosystem. Yield Guild Games has announced this cutting-edge advancement through its official X account.
🎉 OORT x YGG Partnership Announcement
Thrilled to announce our strategic partnership with @oortech to revolutionize the decentralized AI ecosystem through community-powered data!
🔹 @YieldGuild: A leading Web3 gaming guild whose global community will contribute premium AI… pic.twitter.com/fUag8CsXgZ
— Yield Guild Games (@YieldGuild) March 7, 2025 Yield Guild Games to Enable AI Innovation Yield Guild Games (YGG) possesses a significant place in the Web3 gaming sector. The platform aims to train AI models by offering high-quality data using its global community. YGG, by partnering with OORT, strives to support its members in providing valuable data.
This development reinforces AI advancement, signifying human involvement. Yield Guild Games leverages decentralized networks to enable new earning possibilities for its community. This innovation plays a crucial role in inventing the AI technology future.
OORT to Empower the Future of Decentralized AI The decentralized AI cloud of OORT aims to provide verifiable data and computing power, along with storage. These are the important components to create secure and transparent AI models. OORT leverages YGG’s community-driven data to transform the training of AI models. This advancement ensures a more representative and diverse aspect of AI models.
Both platforms, YGG and OORT, strive to democratize the development of artificial intelligence while mitigating the dependence on centralized AI systems. The partnership between YGG and OORT underscores this commitment of both platforms.
YGG, by collaborating with OORT, is set to signal a significant step forward to create an AI future that will be more equitable. In this future, human contributors and decentralized networks are poised to create intelligent systems. With the evolution of this alliance, Yield Guild Games and OORT strive to build future updates on this innovation.
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Crypto journalist with years of experience providing in-depth analysis and news on blockchain and decentralized finance. With a keen eye for detail, Shahzaib delivers insightful articles that explore the latest trends, market movements, and innovations within the crypto and blockchain ecosystem. His work focuses on educating readers while offering expert commentary on the evolving landscape of digital assets, DeFi protocols, and the broader impact of blockchain technology.
In brief Yield Guild Games has launched a new publishing division, YGG Play, focused on casual, crypto-native titles it dubs “Casual Degen” games. Its first release, LOL Land, is a browser-based board game that features Pudgy Penguins community characters and offers token-based rewards. The game has launched exclusively on Pudgy Penguins' Abstract Chain and has received over 100,000 pre-registrations ahead of release, according to YGG. After four years of watching Web3 games struggle to find their audience, Yield Guild Games decided the industry had to rethink how it matches players with the kind of games they're actually in for: lighthearted chaos, in a "casual degen" vibe.
Instead of chasing broad mainstream adoption, the guild protocol launched YGG Play, a new game publishing unit dedicated to games that embrace the degen culture, with LOL Land, a web browser-based game explicitly designed for crypto-native players who live in the proverbial trenches.
"People play casual games on their phones while commuting, waiting in line, or taking a break," Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG, told Decrypt. "They do it for fun as well as rewards like streaks, badges, or collectibles. And they happily spend a lot of real money on those games."
Through its years of establishing a foothold with Web3 gamers by pioneering the so-called "play-to-earn" movement from 2020, YGG has learned "what's fun, what works and what doesn't," leading it to develop "some very strong opinions on how to best serve the crypto market," Dizon explained in a separate statement shared with Decrypt.
The move represents a strategic shift for YGG from investing in Web3 games to creating them directly. Rather than targeting mainstream gamers, the guild is focusing on crypto-native users who trade meme coins, mint NFTs, and engage in speculative activities.
The new game, LOL Land, features four thematic boards, including YGG City, Beach Day, Carnival, and Ice World Wonderland, which showcases Pudgy Penguins IP with playable characters based on community members like Aaron Teng and Rusk0f.
The game offers two distinct gameplay modes. Free play provides unlimited rolls without token rewards, while premium mode requires purchasing rolls to earn points redeemable for YGG tokens from a $10 million prize pool.
The browser-based board game surpassed 100,000 pre-registrations before launching exclusively on Abstract Chain, according to YGG.
For LOL Land, players can "earn YGG tokens and [you] can use them to claim NFTs,” Dizon explained.
The game draws directly from Dizon's experience in casual games and his experience in Web3 gaming thereafter.
"Before getting into crypto and founding YGG, I was a game developer for a little bit over 20 years," Dizon shared with Decrypt. "I was making casual games for much of my career."
Degens over mass marketThe publishing strategy deliberately targets crypto enthusiasts rather than attempting to onboard traditional gamers. Dizon argues this approach addresses an underserved market segment larger than hardcore Web3 gaming.
"If you look at people who are trading meme coins, minting NFTs, or trading on exchanges, these are people that you can consider to be possible players under the 'Casual Degen' label," Dizon said.
Asked about how he thinks Web3 games could last, Dizon, who claims to prefer playing single-player RPGs like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, told Decrypt it's a matter of perseverance.
"I do think that Web3 games can have a lasting impact on people," he said. "It's hard to make games in general. It's even harder to make games that have new technology and figure out what the right format is for that technology, for people to use it.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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PANews reported on August 4 that Yield Guild Games (YGG), the world's largest decentralized gaming guild network, announced the establishment of a new Onchain Guild and allocated 50 million YGG tokens (worth approximately US$7.5 million) to the ecological fund pool to explore revenue generation strategies.
YGG's Onchain Guild utilizes a decentralized structure, using only guild assets for exclusive transactions and not accepting third-party capital or providing investment services. This ecosystem capital pool is co-led by YGG Corporate Development Manager Serge-Raymond Nzabandora and Head of Corporate Development Andy Chou, both of whom have extensive experience in technology investment and capital markets.
PANews reported on August 13th that Yield Guild Games (YGG) released its July update report, stating that its first self-developed game, League of Legends Land, has performed strongly since its May launch, attracting over 631,000 monthly active users (MAUs) and 69,000 daily active users (DAUs), with an average player spending of $434. YGG also signed its first third-party publishing agreement, becoming the official publishing partner of Gigaverse, an on-chain RPG game from GLHF.
In addition, YGG completed a repurchase of 135 ETH of YGG tokens (worth $518,000) on July 31. As of that day, the total value of its treasury reached $38 million, of which $7.7 million was stablecoins, treasury bonds and large-cap tokens.
According to previous news, YGG established the game publishing department YGG Play and launched its first blockchain game "LOL Land" .
South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange Upbit has announced a new listing. The exchange will begin supporting the Yield Guild Games (YGG) token in KRW and USDT trading pairs.
Upbit to List Yield Guild Games (YGG) Token on KRW and USDT Markets YGG transactions will open on the Ethereum network at 2:30 PM on October 15, 2025. Upbit cautioned investors to complete network verification before trading. Deposits and withdrawals made outside the specified network (YGG–Ethereum) will not be supported.
The exchange will implement temporary trading restrictions for investor protection during the listing. Buy orders will be limited for the first five minutes after trading begins, and sell orders below 10% of the previous day's closing price will not be permitted. Only limit orders will be valid for the first two hours.
According to Upbit, YGG's reference price the previous day was set at 0.00000129 BTC (approximately 219.4 KRW or 0.1458 USDT).
Yield Guild Games (YGG) is described as a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) operating in a blockchain-based Play-to-Earn (P2E) ecosystem.
The project aims to support on-chain gaming communities, verify user contributions, and enable reward sharing. The YGG token is used for staking, yield farming, and governance.
*This is not investment advice.
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On December 27, per Arkham monitoring, an address starting with "0xE040" deposited 40 million YGG tokens into Binance seven hours earlier—valued at roughly $2.65 million. Over the past five months, this address has periodically transferred YGG tokens to Binance’s deposit address. The tokens originally originated from the treasury and multisig addresses of Yield Guild Games (YGG), a play-to-earn guild.
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