This Week in Crypto Games: Ethereum Network Ronin Opens Up, and GameStop Goes Bitcoin?

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

GameStop Bitcoin plans: Iconic video game store turned meme stock GameStop saw its GME stock rise from $26 to a peak of nearly $31 on Thursday, following a CNBC report claiming the retailer is considering investing in Bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies. GameStop did not reply to Decrypt's request for comment.

The retailer previously took a strong step into the Web3 world with the launch of an NFT marketplace and associated crypto wallet—aligning with gaming network Immutable and other industry partners in the process. But the company ultimately shut the NFT marketplace down in early 2024. If the CNBC report is accurate, we may be seeing GameStop reconsider its crypto ventures now that the regulatory future looks brighter in the United States, following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

AI agent gaming companion: Ever feel lonely while playing a video game? There’s an AI agent for that. Balance.fun has launched as an extension of the E-Pal platform, becoming the home for AI agent gaming companions that will coach and support you via a chatbox while you play your favorite video games. This comes ahead of an Ethereum token launch for the project, which is currently scheduled for late Q1 2025.

When creating an AI agent on Balance.fun, the user can customize their personality by assigning it hobbies, jobs, and other traits, as well as select the character’s appearance. The agents use reinforcement learning, which means they learn based on the reward or punishment that comes after an action. So if your companion is watching you play League of Legends, then they may notice patterns in your gameplay that regularly lead to negative results, and can notify you about weaknesses in your game.

By comparison, E-Pal offers human companions that can queue up with you, critique your gameplay, or just chat. AI agents lack the emotional aspect of a human, but can be helpful when someone is looking for gameplay advice driven by raw data.

Ronin opens up: After four years of restricting who could build on the gaming network, Ethereum gaming network Ronin has officially gone permissionless—allowing anyone to build on the blockchain. With this move, Ronin creator Sky Mavis has released the Ronin Developer Console as a toolkit to help those building on the network. It lets developers offer sponsored transactions (so users dodge gas fees), provides smart contract templates, and more

“Today marks the dawn of Ronin’s golden age,” Sky Mavis CEO and co-founder Trung Nguyen said, in a statement. “With Open Ronin, we’re accelerating our growth—unlocking more games, DeFi applications, and dApps than ever before. I believe this moment will be studied for years to come.”

As part of the Open Ronin announcement, Pirate Nation developer Proof of Play said that the game is expanding from Arbitrum to Ronin, with a Ronin NFT mint planned ahead.

ICYMI

• Scientists have built a lickable device that lets you taste things in VR.
• Ethereum NFT project Goblintown revealed its upcoming PC and Mac game, Goblintown: Really Hard Driving Game.
• Crypto metaverse Decentraland opened its submissions for its Metaverse Fashion Week, set to take place from April 9 to 12.
• Popular crypto shooter Off the Grid has added additional rewards to its battle pass.

• Mobile game developer Gumi Inc. is gearing up to acquire $6.58 million in Bitcoin (BTC) as part of its strategy to expand its blockchain operations.
• A new experience is coming to Yuga Labs metaverse Otherside, called Bathroom Blitz.
• NRN Agents started its reinforcement learning agent experiment, which it believes will bring “new levels of immersion” to gaming soon
• Pirate Nation announced that its PIRATE token can now be earned by completing in-game quests.
• Popular metaverse Roblox is part of an “active investigation” by the SEC, due to alleged lax safety measures for children.
• The official design of crypto handheld console the SuiPlay0X1 was revealed—and it looks sleek.

• B3, an ecosystem token for the Ethereum layer-3 gaming network of the same name, climbed to a new all-time high on Tuesday
• Telegram game Zoo Family released its tokenomics, ahead of its ZOO token launch and airdrop.
• Off the Grid surpassed 13 million unique players, according to Routescan data of the GUNZ testnet, with over 450,000 daily active addresses.
• Crypto trading card game What Is This Sorcery blew past its Kickstarter goal, drawing in double as much required, to create physical cards for the game.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

Edited by Andrew Hayward