The Sandbox metaverse game owned by NFT investment giant Animoca Brands has surpassed 2 million registered users amid its play-to-earn season 2 alpha launch. The crypto game backed by NFTs and its native SAND token has been in the works for roughly four years, and the latest preview into the game comes just a couple of months after its long-awaited season 1 alpha launch in late November. Season 2 officially went live earlier today and any user is able to freely explore 35 different virtual experiences including a sneak peek of the “Snoopverse” in partnership with popular rapper and new-found …

Hot off the news that the FarmVille and Words With Friends developer Zynga will release the first NFT game this year, Zynga’s blockchain gaming aspirations are taking shape. Matt Wolf, the marketing veteran with experience at EA and SEGA, is the new vice president of blockchain gaming for Zynga. He’s setting up the new team, bringing a wealth of “traditional gaming” experience to play-to-earn (P2E). In an interview with Cointelegraph, he said the talent pool in P2E gaming is: “Off the charts in terms of economics and traditional finance firepower; incredible people. Also, on the innovation side and on the …

Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022 is the Winter Olympic's official play-to-earn multiplayer mobile game, created in collaboration between Animoca Brands-owned nWayPlay game studio and the International Olympics Committee. The app is currently only available on the Google Play store for Android phones, with no official release date for iOS devices yet. In the Olympian spirit, Cointelegraph played the newly launched game and reviewed the experience. Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022 Unveiled! Learn more about the new Play-To-Earn game here: https://t.co/q7dRTFCkmk #NFT #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/93rUDpmMj4 — Olympics Games Jam (@OlympicGamesJam) February 3, 2022 The game flow aims to mimic the real-life olympics: …

Microsoft Crop. is acquiring gaming giant Activision Blizzard Inc. for $69 billion as part of a move to ramp up its gaming and Metaverse plans. Activision Blizzard is home to a long list of iconic gaming franchises such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft and Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater. Following the deal, its games are set to be added to Microsoft Xbox’s Game Pass service that has 25 million subscribers. According to a Jan. 18 announcement from Microsoft, the firm will acquire Activision Blizzard for $95.00 per share at a valuation of $68.7 billion. The deal is …

The South Korean government has moved to block the release of new play to earn (P2E) games and requested that existing ones be removed from Google Play and Apple’s App Store. P2E gaming has become popular in the cryptocurrency industry. Gamers typically must first purchase game pieces as non fungible tokens in order to play the game and receive in-game rewards. However gaming prizes over a few dollars are banned in South Korea. The Game Management Committee (GMC) in the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism yesterday requested major mobile app marketplaces block any games that require in-app purchases before …

French gaming giant Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s new nonfungbile token (NFT) project Quartz is facing strong pushback from the gaming community. Ubisoft unveiled the Beta launch of Quartz via a brief YouTube video on Dec. 8 that has 214,721 views at the time of writing. The project aims to combine NFTs and blockchain technology with existing Triple-A game titles, and announced Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint as its first game to officially integrate NFTs. The video introduces Quartz as a platform that enables gamers to “collect the first playable and energy-efficient Ubisoft NFTs” that are dubbed as “Digits.” YouTube recently changed …

Silk Roads lead to nonfungile tokens Bidding for a 1/1 NFT auction created by imprisoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has surpassed 261 Ether (ETH), $1.17 million at the time of writing. The NFT depicts a hand-drawn illustration from Ulbricht of a psychedelic eye, and is part of a collection of writings and nine other artworks he created, some while in prison, that are included as part of the NFT sale. The auction kicked off on day one of the Art Basil Miami art fair on Dec. 2 and is being hosted by SuperRare. The auction is set to conclude …

The Matrix’s NFT revelations Soaring demand for the Warner Bros.’ Matrix NFT avatar drop on Nifty’s this week caused the website's purchasing page to crash. Earlier this month, the film studio announced it would be dropping 100,000 unique Matrix-inspired avatar NFTs for $50 each as part of a promotional campaign for the new Matrix Resurrections film set to hit cinemas in the U.S. on Dec. 22. After more than 300,000 Matrix fans queued up for the drop on Nov. 30, Nifty’s was forced to start and stop the queue multiple times due to max capacity-induced “infrastructure issues.” Hello again everyone. …

Upcoming NFT based mobile role-playing game Guild of Guardians has sold out two tranches of its native token (GEMS) totaling $5.3 million. The token sale, held on Coinlist on Nov. 30 was oversubscribed 82 times, with around 808,000 users registering. More than 10,700 new GEM holders from over 100 countries purchased a maximum of $500 worth of tokens. However users from Australian, the U.S.,Canada and China were prohibited from purchasing tokens amid mounting regulatory concerns. GOG allocated 6% of the total 1 billion total tokens to the CoinList sale, while 63% of the supply will be distributed via community-driven events, …

Metaverse gaming tokens Ethverse (ETHV), The Sandbox (SAND), GameSwap (GSWAP), Yield Guild Games (YGG), Axie Infinity (AXS) are the few cryptocurrencies seeing gains on Nov. 17 with Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and most of the market in the red. Best-performing crypto sector The emerging division of the blockchain universe saw its market cap swell by more than 9% in the previous 24 hours and almost 8% in the last seven days to reach $17.42 billion. Its gains came on the back of volatile upside moves in Ethverse, The Sandbox, GameSwap, Yield Guild Games, Axie Infinity, and other markets. Meanwhile, about …

Twitch Rivals, an esports tournament host featuring Twitch streamers and pro gamers, has onboarded crypto trading platform Crypto.com as a global marketing and cryptocurrency platform partner. The multi-year partnership will see Crypto.com as an official partner of Twitch Rivals in the Asia-Pacific region, aiming to increase local crypto adoption in the esports landscape. According to Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com: “With well-over 1 billion gamers worldwide, fans of gaming and esports are digital natives, for whom cryptocurrency is inevitable.” The deal also entitles Crypto.com to have category exclusivity, in-stream branded segments, media placement, and activations at Twitch events, …

Nonfungible token (NFT)-game and virtual property developer Animoca Brands has doubled its valuation to $2.2 billion after closing a new funding round that fetched $65 million. The latest funding round was conducted at a pre-money valuation of $2.2 billion, and included backing from gaming giants Ubisoft Entertainment along with Liberty City Ventures, Sequoia China, Dragonfly Capital to name a few. It’s more vindication for a company that was kicked off the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in March 2020, in part for its involvement in cryptocurrencies. According to the Wednesday announcement from the firm, more than 43.8 million newly issued shares …