A recent study by CoinGecko found that more than three-quarters of all blockchain games released in the past five years are dead in the water.
Of the 2,817 games released between 2018 and 2023 included in the study, only 690 still have a somewhat active player base.
CoinGecko defines a “failed” Web3 game as one whose 14-day rolling average active user count has fallen more than 99% from its peak.
2021 saw the highest number of blockchain games released in a single year, with 738 games, and the following year saw the highest number of games failed due to a major cryptocurrency collapse, with 742 games failing in a single year.
According to CoinGecko, this puts the average failure rate for Web3 games in any given year since 2018 at around 80%.
CoinGecko noted that low-failure years tend to coincide with bull market retreats, while high-failure years come at the beginning of bear market cycles.
Related: Free-to-play Web3 games hold the key to mass adoption — YGG Co-Founder
CryptoKitties was one of the first Web3 games to gather hype in late 2017, but adoption has been sluggish since. Decentraland, The Sandbox, and Axie Infinity are some of the Web3 games that were released early and are still widely available today.
According to CoinGecko, recent data shows that Alien Worlds, Splinterlands, and Planet IX had the top three average uniquely active wallets used between January 1 and April 22, 2023.
While 2022 had the highest number of failed games, the trend slowed in 2023, with only 507 failed projects as of November 27.
“The low failure rate probably indicates that the web3 game state has stabilized,” CoinGecko said.
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