A message from our CEO

I'm personally thrilled to share our internal 2023 State of Crypto Gaming report, and I hope this report helps everyone understand more about the top games, blockchains, and users playing them.

Since the crypto winter of 2022, the crypto gaming sector became the subject of intense scrutiny and debate. In crypto gaming, news such as "Decentraland's billion-dollar metaverse reportedly had 38 active users in one day" made everyone question whether crypto gaming was a sustainable business model, or if it was all just bull-market fueled hype.

At LootRush, we believe the most accurate way to understand the state of the crypto gaming market is to look at what the users are doing. We believe metrics like the number of downloads, user traffic, and retention are the most important ones to understand the underlying health of the market. As LootRush has been extremely data-driven since the beginning, we've closely followed the market's expansion and are pleased with its progress over the recent years, both in traction and gaming quality. This is what drove us to share our internal report publicly.

The entire web3 gaming market has reached 61 million monthly visits. To put this in perspective, Epic Games garners 63 million visits, Binance 50 million, Minecraft 28 million, and Coinbase 23 million visits.

Similar to the free-to-play mobile revolution, the traffic is primarily led by new gaming studios, who are building new experiences, and not by traditional names from the mobile or console worlds.

This is because NFTs in games are largely an example of an 'Innovator's Dilemma'. New studios leverage ownership and an open ecosystem as an edge to grow, attracting consumers who prefer to own their digital items and play in an open ecosystem, while established gaming companies have little incentive to give power back to their consumers.

We're excited about the future of crypto gaming, and we hope this report will serve as a valuable resource towards a more informed understanding of the crypto gaming ecosystem.

Anderson Ferminiano

Key takeaways:

• Over 60 Million Monthly Visits and over 4,000 Crypto Games: The crypto gaming space sees over 60 million monthly visits and boasts a portfolio of over 4,000 crypto games. To put this in perspective, Epic Games garners 63 million monthly visits, Binance 50 million, Minecraft 28 million, and Coinbase 23 million.
  
  
• Asia Continues Leading in Web3 Gaming Adoption: Asia remains the leading continent in web3 gaming adoption with 30% of traffic. Europe now ranks second with 26%, followed by North America with 20%.
  
  
• United States Is the #1 Country By Visits: The US is the number one country in total visits, contributing 17% of global traffic and 85% of North America's traffic.
  
  
• Distinct Gaming Preferences Across Continents: Each continent showcases unique gaming preferences, reflecting cultural and regional variations in gaming tastes.
  
  
• Dominance of Binance, Ethereum, and Polygon: These platforms lead in terms of the number of games available and the volume of monthly visits.
  
  
• High Engagement on Ronin, Xpla, and Wemix: Game-focused blockchains like Ronin, Xpla, and Wemix exhibit the highest average engagement per game; excluding Starknet and Zksync from consideration, as each has only one tracked game.
  
  
• Card Games Lead in Popularity: Card Games, including Sorare, Axie Infinity, and Splinterlands, are highly popular, with three games in the top 10 rankings.
  
  
• Web3 Gaming is Highly Fragmented, Both in Game and Genre Popularity: The market is characterized by its diversity, with a wide array of games and genres appealing to different player segments. The most popular game, Sorare, and the most popular Genre, Card Games, account for only 10% and 11% of total monthly visits, respectively.
  
  
• RPG and Action Games Abound: RPG and Action games are the most numerous web3 games, each category having 2x the number of games compared to Card Games.
  
  
• Immutable X and Solana Have Higher Visits per Game on Average vs. Other Blockchains: These emerging platforms, though hosting fewer games, show high visits, indicating growing significance in the web3 gaming space.
  
  
• Distinct Gaming Preferences Across Continents: Each continent showcases unique gaming preferences, reflecting cultural and regional variations in gaming tastes.
  
  
  • MMORPG and Fantasy Games are Most Popular in Asia in Terms of Monthly Visits.
    
    
  • Popular Games Influence Genre Preferences in Europe and North America: Sorare has boosted the popularity of Card and Sports games in Europe, while Virtual-World games like Sandbox and Decentraland are popular in North America.
    
    
• Action Games are Most Popular on Both Ethereum and Polygon Networks: Action games have the highest visits on Ethereum and Polygon. While they are also the most prevalent type of game on Polygon, RPG games are more prevalent on Ethereum and Binance.
  
  
• Higher Visits for Multi-Blockchain Games: Games associated with three blockchains see an average of 89% more visits than those tied to just a single blockchain.
  
  

Market Insights

• Mir4's is the First Web3 Game to Achieve Top Rankings on Steam Mir4 became the first web3 game to enter the top 30 most played games on Steam and ranks among the top 3 MMORPGs on the platform.
  
  
• Broad Availability on Gaming Platforms: Web3 games are now accessible across various platforms, including iOS, Android, Steam, PS5, and Epic Games. Each platform has its own rules for NFTs and tokens, ranging from somewhat to fully open.
  
  
  • Game Developers Adapt to Work with Steam and Apple: Developers are using alternative methods for users to manage NFTs to comply with distribution rules on Steam and Apple Store.
    
    
  • Google's Policy Shift: Google became more open towards web3 games, changing its policy towards blockchain-based apps on the Play Store and allowing ads for web3 games in Q3 2023.
    
    
  • Epic Games' Embrace of Web3: Epic Games is increasingly accommodating web3 games, allowing more games to list and envisioning an open future where NFTs can be transferred across ecosystems.
    
    
  • Upcoming Launch on PS5: The anticipated game 'Off the Grid' by Gunzilla Games is scheduled for its PS5 launch in December 2023.
    
    
• Major Video Game Companies Venturing into Web3: Nearly 3/4 of leading video game companies (based on market capitalization) have engaged in web3 games through investments, game development, or partnerships.
  
  
  • Sony's NFT Patent: Sony filed a patent to make NFTs transferrable between different games and devices.
    
    
  • Take-Two's Web3 Game Development: GTA developer, Take-Two, announced the development of their first web3 game, Sugartown.
    
    
  • Ubisoft's Web3 Initiatives: Assassins' Creed developer Ubisoft announced their first web3 game, Champions Tactics, and is partnering with Immutable to create frictionless web3 gaming experiences.
    
    

Traffic Statistics

This segment takes a closer look at the geographic and technological landscapes where Web3 games are making a mark, revealing the current gaming genres that are dominating the space and the blockchains that are leading with the most popular games.