The crypto gaming business is becoming more popular as more money is put into it and as Web 2.0 gaming companies try to break into the Web 3 market.
Robbie Ferguson, president, and co-founder of Australia-based web3 gaming company Immutable said that the company has set up a $500 million fund to invest in developers and startups.
With the money, Immutable X, its layer-2 Ethereum-focused platform, will be used to fund projects that are making web3 games and NFT-focused companies.
Ferguson said that the main goal of Immutable is to make it possible for the next generation of Web3 games to be played on a large scale. GameStop, TikTok, OpenSea, and Illuvium are just some of the gaming companies and IP owners that have built on its platform in the past.
“We think gaming is one of the most important opportunities in the history of web3,” he said. “The total market that can be reached will be huge and much bigger than what gaming is now. Just in-game products alone are a $100 billion business.”
Ferguson said that the addressable gaming market as a whole is growing at a rate of 10% per year. This means that the industry’s ownable assets could be worth $1 trillion if movies, TV shows, and music are put into games.
Ferguson said that the $500 million came from “a variety of sources.” “Of course, there are all of our venture partners, who are using their balance sheets and VC allocations to come in on these deals. There’s also cashback on [Immutable’s] balance sheet and grants from the foundation, which are designed to encourage and build the Immutable ecosystem.”
For future investment opportunities, its fund will work with strategic game publishers and other investors who focus on web3 gaming and NFTs, such as BITKRAFT, Animoca Brands, Arrington Capital, Double Peak, AirTree, King River Capital, and GameStop.
In March, Singapore-based Temasek backed a $200 million Series C investment in Immutable. This gave the company a value of $2.5 billion. Immutable Ventures has put money into several web3 companies in the past, such as StarkWare, Stardust, PlanetQuest, and Topology.
Ferguson said, “Now is the best time to start making long-term games with realistic economies that will bring 100 million to 1 billion players to Web3.” “I am sure that the first 100 million people will be interested in a [Web 2.0] game. All it takes is a breakthrough here to make a moderately big, profitable game in which NFTs can be used behind the scenes without any friction and reap the benefits.”
Ferguson thinks that mid-market game companies will be the first to market with web3 games in the next 24 months. Then, over the next two years, he thinks more games will be added to the web3 environment.
Ferguson said, “The main point is that it takes time to add web3 and make a good game.” “In the next eight to twelve months, there will be a lot of Web3 games, and in the years after that, there will be hundreds of Triple-A games.”
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