Arbitrum announces first $10 million gaming grants, including Wildcard

By: blockchaingamer biz|2025/05/08 20:15:02
0
Share
copy
Arbitrum’s 200 million ARB Gaming Catalyst Program, now rebranded to Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, has announced its first $10 million cohort of investments and grants. Backed by VCs including Paradigm, Framework, and Bitkraft, Arbitrum Gaming Ventures was approved in June 2024 , with the aim of boosting game projects built on Arbitrum. Coming under scrutiny in 2024, with calls to completely shut it down in 2025, the initiative has now revealed the first five projects receiving investments, spanning across development, publishing platforms, and game infrastructure. Notably, the chosen projects don’t include any smaller startups, but rather established games and platforms. “Arbitrum Gaming Ventures is backing proven founders who aren’t just making games – they’re helping create an even more vibrant Arbitrum ecosystem,” said Arbitrum Gaming Ventures partner Rick Johanson. As for the five projects granted a share of the $10 million, one is the somewhat surprising game Wildcard from Paul Bettner’s Playful Studios. Described as a web2 card collecting MOBA that will launch via Steam and other traditional game platforms, its inaugural NFTs were minted on Ethereum. “When we looked toward the future, Arbitrum stood out as the best platform for our game(s). Aside from the obvious technical advantages, we’re excited to have support from Arbitrum Gaming Ventures as we bring Wildcard – and our other projects – to Arbitrum,” commented Playful’s Katy Drake Bettner. For now, all that’s been announced about those other projects is Playful’s native web3 streaming platform Thousands. Bringing this and its associated projects including the WC token to Arbitrum is a big deal for the network. The remaining four grants were given to “This first cohort reflects our commitment to supporting high-quality experiences that are built for the long term – products that attract players, retain them, and expand meaningful engagement across Arbitrum,” added Johansson.

You may also like

Particle Founder: The entrepreneurial insights I have gained the most from in the past year

Stop lean startup, stop lightning entrepreneurship, and think carefully about what your product aspirations are.

Huang Renxun's latest podcast transcript: The future of Nvidia, the development of embodied intelligence and agents, the explosion of inference demand, and the public relations crisis of artificial intelligence

The competition in the future is not just about whose model is larger or whose computing power is stronger, but also about who understands the industry better, who can embed AI more deeply into real processes, and who can organize these capabilities into a runnable and scalable system.

OKX Ventures Research Report: AI Agent Economic Infrastructure Research Report (Part 1)

The existing infrastructure is hostile to the Agent economy. Agents can think and act independently at the "capability level," but at the "economic level," they are still locked into infrastructure designed for humans.

The migration of settlement rights: B18 and the institutional starting point of on-chain banks

In the traditional system, banks decide the settlement; in the on-chain system, code begins to take over this responsibility.

From Tencent and Circle: Looking at the Simple and Difficult Questions of Investment

The AI narrative continues to ferment, but the recent performance of related stocks varies, with some in the midst of summer and others as if in winter.

The second half of stablecoins no longer belongs to the crypto circle

What Coinbase doesn't want, Mastercard is eager to buy.

Popular coins

Latest Crypto News

Read more