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Over 75% of Web3 Games 'Failed' in Last Five Years (coingecko.com) 80

Posted by msmash from the reality-check dept.
Web3 research and analytics firm CoinGecko: Around 2,127 web3 games have failed in the last five years since the GameFi niche emerged, representing 75.5% of the 2,817 web3 games launched. In other words, 3 out of every 4 web3 games have become inactive. The average annual failure rate for web3 games has been 80.8% from 2018 to 2023, based on the number of web3 games failed compared to launched.
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Over 75% of Web3 Games 'Failed' in Last Five Years More

Over 75% of Web3 Games 'Failed' in Last Five Years

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  • That's shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @01:42PM (#64044339)

    Almost 25% of web3 games *didn't* fail???

    • Re:That's shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @02:07PM (#64044415)
      That's because 75% are games, while the remaining 25% are money laundering scams.

      Fun fact, the Supreme Court is about to gut the SEC's ability to enforce securities laws. Because that's a good idea.... If you think 2008 was bad buckle up bucko, we're in for some fun.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by CrappySnackPlane ( 7852536 )

        Fun fact, the Supreme Court is about to gut the SEC's ability to enforce securities laws.

        If this is referring to SEC v. Jarsky, then no. What they do seem poised to do is establish a right of SEC "defendants" to move their cases to the federal courts system, rather than be tried in front of the same panel that already decided they need to be tried, with no jury present.

        You might as well be saying that the existence of circuit courts is gutting the police force's ability to enforce assault laws. To the extent that they are, that's a good thing.

        • > You might as well be saying that the existence of circuit courts is gutting the police force's ability to enforce assault laws. To the extent that they are, that's a good thing.

          A better analogy is they are poised to strip police departments of the ability to try traffic violations with their own internal court system and force every speeding ticket to be heard in front of a jury.

          This could absolutely hamstring law enforcement across all federal agencies, if literally every violation no matter how small

          • A better analogy is they are poised to strip police departments of the ability to try traffic violations with their own internal court system and force every speeding ticket to be heard in front of a jury.

            Most (all?) states provide a right to a jury trial when the potential penalty for a traffic offense is above a certain limit, either in terms of potential fines / jail time or when the charges themselves become criminal in nature.

            Considering the low-stakes "rolling stop" and "55 in a 45" level of SEC offenses already aren't pursued by the SEC, functionally this is no different.

            • > Most (all?) states provide a right to a jury trial when the potential penalty for a traffic offense is above a certain limit,

              But the cutoff criteria isn't being challenged. The very fact that there is legal process and penalty without jury trial is at the core of the case here.

              But you make a good point, inadvertently: This could ALSO impact state and local cases. If SCOTUS decides to hamstring SEC's ability to levy fines without jury trial, then there is powerful precedent to do the same across the bo

            • Traffic proceedings don't happen in a court. The accuser cannot be the prosecutor, and the official presiding over the whole works is called a commissioner, NOT a judge (i don't care if they are a judge in another capacity/venue) Traffic "court" is a extortion scheme that makes astronomical gobs of cash for municipalities.

          • A better analogy is they are poised to strip police departments of the ability to try traffic violations with their own internal court system and force every speeding ticket to be heard in front of a jury.

            Uh... I don't know where you're from, but it can't be the United States. Police here don't have "internal courts" where they're also the judge. You still get due process for traffic violations, the only difference is most of them are in civil court rather than criminal court, which in some cases is tried by a justice of the peace or some other lower level magistrate. Three letter agencies virtually don't even bother with civil infractions; they're all criminal. So this is not even remotely comparable.

            Maybe

            • I'm from New York. Here, traffic court is under the purview of the Traffic Violations Bureau, which is part of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. It is not part of the broader criminal or civil court system (New York State Unified Court System), but an entire due process system unto itself that specializes in traffic and vehicle related infractions.

              Traffic court does not have a jury. Again, it's the lack of a jury that's the crux of the supreme court case here.

              The analogy is both the NYSDMV an

              • I'm from New York. Here, traffic court is under the purview of the Traffic Violations Bureau, which is part of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. It is not part of the broader criminal or civil court system (New York State Unified Court System), but an entire due process system unto itself that specializes in traffic and vehicle related infractions.

                That sounds like a gigantic conflict of interest. Not surprised I guess, government corruption in NY is legendary. Always has been. Hell, you guys are barely coming out from the reign of the Cuomo Crime Family. It sounds like the Supreme Court would be doing you a favor. In Arizona it's even against the state constitution for the government to offer any kind of incentive for police to issue citations. For example, police departments aren't allowed to factor how many traffic tickets a cop has issued into his

                • > That sounds like a gigantic conflict of interest. Not surprised I guess, government corruption in NY is legendary.

                  I can almost guarantee it's the same or similar in every state. Government departments that are responsible for enforcing civil laws will have their own dedicated court system for processing those cases. It's more efficient that way, the staff are all familiar with the rules and regs, and it doesn't clog up the broader civil court system with mundane cases.

                  > Dude...The key word there is

                  • I can almost guarantee it's the same or similar in every state. Government departments that are responsible for enforcing civil laws will have their own dedicated court system for processing those cases. It's more efficient that way, the staff are all familiar with the rules and regs, and it doesn't clog up the broader civil court system with mundane cases.

                    As any cop will tell you, people make mistakes all the time while driving. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. When officers are incentivized to penalize even subtle but otherwise safe infractions, you're damn fucking right your court system is going to be overloaded. Not only that, it disregards the entire purpose of traffic laws, it throws the idea of justice out the window entirely, it ties up already overburdened police departments, and in general it makes people more likely to distrust the polic

                    • Bleh made an error on that, said two years and then 1 year after. This is because it changed recently and at one moment I had the old rule in mind, then subsequently corrected myself whilst forgetting to edit that old bit out.

        • So there's a couple of problems with that (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @05:39PM (#64045037)
          First it opens the door to high priced lawyers getting confusing the jury who doesn't have the kind of backgrounds necessary to see past the legal equivalent of the Chewbacca defense.

          The bigger issue is this court is once again ignoring the constitution for the sake of partisanship. The Constitution is crystal clear here you get a jury trial in matters of common law. The highly technical matters involved in SEC law enforcement are not part of the common law and never have been. As a result we use experts appointed to a merit-based system as civil servants instead of political appointees from a president and the Senate.

          It's not the jury trial that Jarkesy is after. Thereafter is the ability to have their case tried by a political appointee who will side with them regardless of the matter of law. And then if all else fails and they can't get the political appointee they want then they'll fall back on a jury trial in the hopes that they can dazzle jury with bullshit.

          All of this takes a highly technical type of investment instrument out of the hands of people who understand it and puts it in the hands of either corrupt political appointees or a jury not equipped to rule on that particular matter of law.

          Again ignoring the constitution for the sake of all partisan win.

          Eventually all this will come and bite us hard in the ass. Maybe a bunch of the people reading this now or so old they'll be dead as a doornail by the time that happens. But I think this is mostly a forum for people in their mid-40s to early fifties. At the rate we are going without significant change your retirement savings are going to get wiped out in the coming economic collapses from all this large-scale deregulation.

      • You mean they're about to gut the SEC's ability to regulate things as securities even when they aren't securities? Shocking.

        Or maybe they're about to gut the SEC's ability to sometimes regulate something as a security and sometimes not, and/or when a different federal agency wants to regulate the same thing in a completely different way than the SEC.

        • No it's got nothing to do with that (Score:4, Informative)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @05:43PM (#64045047)
          But thanks for playing. As a consolation prize I'll explain to you what's actually going on. The Constitution grants the right to a jury trial in matters of common law. Legal cases involving complex investment instruments are not matters of common law and therefore are not covered by the constitutional guarantee of a jury trial.

          Instead the trials are done by experts and in particular experts who are appointed as part of a merit-based system and completely separate from the system of political appointees we use today for judges.

          So what we have here is the Republican Supreme Court for partisan reasons ignoring the Constitution so that they can have cases related to investment crimes either tried by a corrupt partisan judge or by a jury who cannot possibly understand the legal ramifications. More likely though it'll just be one of those corrupt political appointees because we've had 40 years of Court packing.

          This is going to massively destabilize Wall Street in the entire US economy with it. And if you'd have the smallest amount of sense you should know this is a bad thing because when Wall Street gambles you lose your job.

          Eventually this will cause an economic collapse and about half the people reading this post will be unemployed. And the best part is is you're going to all be in your fifties because that's the average age of people reading this post and you're never going to find a job again.

          If you have the slightest inkling of how our system and economy works you would understand that this is not a good thing for you personally or anyone you care about. If such a person or person exists.
          • What you have here is a set of highly extraordinary claims, and as such, they require extraordinary evidence to support them. And, as the person making those claims, you're the one responsible for providing that evidence. Put up or shut up.
            • Right wing extremists do increasingly insane things and when you read about the insane things they're doing you don't believe them because they're so fucking insane.

              Nobody would invade a country that had nothing to do with an attack on them using a obviously flimsy pretext just so that they could line their pockets and the pockets of their defense contractor buddies even though it would mean killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people right?

              Nobody would extend a war killing hundreds of thousan
              • I see: you have no evidence, only a bunch of unrelated incidents that you're trying to warp into an excuse for evidence, exactly as I suspected. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

                Not that you have to take my word for it there are plenty of reliable sources online. They're also plenty of sources that will continue to tell you everything is fine and that you can go back to your bread and circuses.

                No, that's not how this works; it's not up to me to hunt for evidence to prove you right, it's up

                • No, there is no rule that requires proof of claims. This is not a court of law. If you are motivated, capable, and the truth is not hidden then you do the homework (for a change.)

                  LAZY: If you are so ignorant at your age; assuming you didn't steal that account, then you are not worth presenting supporting evidence because you won't read or maybe even grasp it given how you need so much help figuring things out on your own. It's up to you to be intellectually honest and discover the truth for yourself if tha

                  • Sorry, but he's the one making the claim. If he wants people to believe him, he's the one that has to provide the evidence. Refusing to do so just reinforces the impression that he's full of BS. And, I'm more than old enough to know better to be the slightest bit impressed by your ad hominem attack, as it's clearly intended to draw attention away from your blathering.
                  • It's called "Sea Lioning". It probably has a more formal name I don't know, but I call it Sea Lioning after a humorous cartoon about a Sea Lion asking unreasonable questions in an effort to derail legitimate debate.

                    It's a common trick right wing trolls use. Keep asking for more and more and more evidence of a claim, even if that evidence has been provided already. He's not talking to me and you, he's talking to the audience of readers. Trying to get them to think "Well, since this guy is asking for it t
                • You're doing the classic Sea Lion trick, named for a comic about an sea lion asking pointless and unreasonable questions to derail legitimate discussion because said Sea Lion has no legitimate comeback to the points being raised. You can use google to easily find the comic.

                  The right wing never have any legitimate arguments, so you always fall back on debate tactics and tricks. You're like a little Ben Shapiro wannabe. It's almost adorable if you weren't eroding the fabric of our democracy with your nons
                  • No 'm not. I'm refusing to take my time and effort doing your job for you. If you want to persuade me, argument by assertion isn't going to work; you're going to have to provide evidence. If you don't, I'm not going to believe you and I may well decide that there isn't any evidence and you're just making things up. Even if you do provide evidence, I may or may not accept it, but at least I'll accept that your claims aren't just figments of your imagination.

              • thank you for pointing out what the "journalists" often fail to do.

      • That's because 75% are games, while the remaining 25% are money laundering scams.

        Wait, you're saying that almost 75% of web 3 games weren't money laundering scams??

  • is less successful than full-featured, content-rich, fast games running natively.

    Shocker...

  • Do I even want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jonadab ( 583620 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @01:50PM (#64044367) Homepage Journal
    What the heck a "web3 game" is?

    • Re:Do I even want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @01:54PM (#64044377)

      I didn't know either, so I gooooooooogled it.

      Web3 is a term used to describe the next iteration of the internet, one that is built on blockchain technology and is communally controlled by its users.

      No wonder they fail.

      • I'd be perfectly happy if all the crypto bros would move on to their own Web3 Internet (With blackjack! And hookers!) so the rest of us wouldn't have to put up with their jackassery. But it's all a Ponzi scheme, they can only make money if they keep reeling in new suckers to buy into their crap.

      • Holy fuck. How is this number not 99%? I only avoid 100% because irredeemable idiocy cannot be completely eradicated.

        That's just... really, really stupid.

        • It *is* 100%; the 25% that succeeded did not really succeed, they just actually made a game (that then is not played by anyone). 75% of the projects died without actually making anything; they failed before they could make something and fail.

      • Re:Do I even want to know... (Score:5, Informative)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @02:52PM (#64044577)

        There were multiple Slashdot stories about "web3" a while ago.

        Basically, the leeches we refer to as "cryptobros" came up with the term "web3" in an attempt to play off the older idea of "web 2.0" with hopes they could gain some traction and wider acceptance. But it's strictly a cryptobro thing - it has no legitimacy, nor is it used by anyone other than the cryptobros.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )

          The name is stolen. Web 3.0 had previously been used to describe the Semantic Web (web pages with extra markup that allowed software to interpret the text on a page).

          • The "semantic web" is what Tim Berners-Lee referred to as Web 2.0 before the term was hijacked to refer to sites using AJAX and similar stuff (client-side scripting, asynchronous requests, DOM manipulation, etc.) for enhanced interactivity. Web 3.0 always seem to have referred to cryptocurrency/NFT crap.

            • <quote>The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0 (not to be confused with Web3), is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards[1] set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).</quote>

              Literally the first line of the wikipedia article on the semantic web.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          There were multiple Slashdot stories about "web3" a while ago.

          Basically, the leeches we refer to as "cryptobros" came up with the term "web3" in an attempt to play off the older idea of "web 2.0" with hopes they could gain some traction and wider acceptance. But it's strictly a cryptobro thing - it has no legitimacy, nor is it used by anyone other than the cryptobros.

          Ah, thanks both.

          So we have an inaccurate headline, shouldn't it be "75% of Web3 games have failed so far".

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        The internet... built on blockchain technology.

        Holy cow, think of the _performance_ characteristics that would have. You could have ping times measured in hours, possibly even days. Perhaps I am taking the words too literally. Especially the words "built on". I hope that I am.
    • the core of the gameplay. Usually what folks call a "Play to Earn" game where you can gold farm for a crypto currency that is meant to have actual value. There's also a smattering of games that promised the ability to "own" DLC on the block chain with the promise of taking that DLC with you to other games. Basically NFTs.

      The NFT nonsense went nowhere because blockchains are just public databases that are difficult to edit. Just because you've got an entry in a DB doesn't mean that entry means anything i
    • Pokemon, but with the pokemon replaced with NFTs.

  • web 3.11 for workgroups will be the one! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @02:07PM (#64044423)

    web 3.11 for workgroups will be the one!

  • What percentage of the 25% that aren't currently "inactive" are zombie games with very little or decreasing activity and no growth? All of them?

  • AI will be used to crank out even more cookie cutter games.

  • Can we have a fourth way of representing the same value, maybe in a pie chart or something so we don't have to needlessly strain our brains by having to look at numbers? Oh wait, the article also provides a bar graph! Still too many numbers though, try and dumb it down a little more so people who play web3 games will understand.

  • Depends on how they define failure.

    The whole mobile/web game space is filled with companies that poop out low effort games in bulk with no expectation of longevity. This is pretty much the popcap games business model in a nutshell and seems to be working well enough for them.

    • PopCap got bought out by EA, so I expect the founders consider that a success.

      To actually be fair, there were a number of fun-enough PopCap games - if you were looking for something you can pick up for a few minutes, play mindlessly, and then put them back down. I find myself playing those sorts of games a lot more than the ones you have to sit down and grind at for hours...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rta ( 559125 )

      Yeah, i'd like to see this against the base rate failure of all games. Or games that require a community or some other reasonable benchmark.

      Even for non-crap games and good games it's really hard to gain and keep users because of the huge amount of competition. It's a pretty brutal industry overall, with market dynamics a lot more like entertainment than tech: i.e. a small number of highly successful participants and a long long tail of people who have to wait tables (or work at a web design / marketing)

  • What's the opposite metric of this? What are like the top 3 or top 5 games that are "web3"? I wouldn't mind trying one out.

    I tried out Axie Infinity at some point, it was quite a hassle to get going and the game play was not very fun.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Chalex ( 71702 )

      OK, so to answer my own question, the top three as of now seem to be "The Sandbox", "Axie Infinity" and "Illuvium".
      https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/gaming

      The Sandbox is supposed to be something like Roblox, Axie I already tried and didn't like and Illuvium is supposed to be like an early-access RPG, I think.

  • What percentage of commercialized video games overall are failures? Would be interesting to know.

    • 95%+ of the games on Steam never make their development costs back.
      However, don't go thinking "wow, web3 did much better", because the breakdown for web3 is:
      75% never even made anything
      25% made a game and it has failed to make them any significant amount of money.

      • Where did you find that? that seems way too high of a stat-- many games on steam are found elsewhere so is that stat only counting steam earnings?

        Did Hollywood accounting scams find there way into the gaming industry?

        • I can't find the exact page I read that on, but here's one that claims 93%:
          https://www.vintageisthenewold... [vintageisthenewold.com]
          There's been lots of data like this looked at over the years, and it's shocking how many games don't even make back the 100$ fee for putting the game on Steam.
          It's because of all the shovelware-ish stuff, the percentage of which has greatly increased in the last few years according to a graph I saw a second ago...uh...
          https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]
          It's not Hollywood accounting, just there's a sea o

      • Those statistics seem to be fabricated or at least exaggerated.

  • They all fail because they are not games. None of them are fun. None of them are pastimes. They are sad, pitiful, pieces of shit, "played" by sad, pitiful pieces of shit who didn't do well at school to get a good job.

    • It's like the guy that wrote a "game" so tiny it could fit into a tweet (back when Twitter was still Twitter). https://www.siliconrepublic.co... [siliconrepublic.com] It was only a "game" by a very loose definition of the word "game."

  • What the fuck is a web3 game? Sounds dumb. As a gamer, I've never heard of them.

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