GameStop Gets into Crypto & Ember Sword Fumbles on Land Sale - Play to Earn #74

And also Blankos, Splinterlands, and winning bitcoin with Counter-Strike

This week has been filled with NFT sales events from a variety of projects, including The Sandbox and Guild of Guardians. However, the one that caught the headlines was Ember Sword. Despite selling out, the sale went paired with all kinds of issues. But that’s not the biggest news of the week. American video game retailer GameStop is getting into NFTs and will launch its own token! Talking about own tokens, Splinterlands announced a governance token, while Blankos will adding play-to-earn mechanics to their game next week. — Robert Hoogendoorn

---

A word from our sponsor - KodaDot is all about creating a carbonless NFT movement. They are doing this by rolling out an NFT infrastructure parachain MetaPrime.network on the low-carbon blockchain Kusama.network. There they will build a community-owned carbon-negative NFT marketplace where artists can offset their mints to make the planet a healthier place. You can recognize NFTs contributing to a healthier planet by the 🌱 carbonless tag.

Follow KodaDot on Twitter and join their Telegram to support their journey towards creating carbon neutrality and driving global forestation.

GameStop Getting Serious into Crypto

Ultra is making a digital distribution platform for games that could shake the foundation of the retail industry. Gabe Newell from Steam should be having nightmares. However, things are a bit quiet. But now GameStop, the game retailer that became world news when a bunch of forum dwellers started purchasing stocks, is getting into the blockchain. They will launch a token, an NFT project, and potentially something that could help to change video game distribution. — Read more here

Despite Troubles Ember Sword Sale Sold Out

I’m not going to lie. I was excited about Ember Sword for quite some time, but this sale was a major F—k up. It’s also a fact that frustrated buyers tend to act like they are enticed to everything, but nonetheless this sale wasn’t very well executed. Thankfully Bright Star Studios will do more sales, with the same amount of discount. They realize they should’ve done better, and that’s a humble way of saying you’re sorry. It’s okay Bright Star, I will try again next time. — Read more here

Blankos Gets Play-to-Earn Update Next Week

Big news from the Junction. Blankos Block Party is moving into its next development phase. One more time all Blankos characters will go back into their packaging and all progress will be reset. From June 2nd the game will feature a play-to-earn mechanic, allowing players to earn in-game money and NFTs by doing quests and missions. This is a huge update and I’m excited. Time to put my daughter to work… ehh… Did I say that out loud? — Read more here

Splinterlands Announced SPS Governance Token

With three years of live gameplay, Splinterlands is a true O.G. in the blockchain gaming space. You can accuse them of having lots of bots, but you can’t see that their game isn’t appealing with its play-to-earn mechanics. Now Splinterlands will go next level, because aside from land gameplay it will introduce its own governance token: Splintershards. — Learn more about SPS here

Infuse Now Allows CS:GO Teams to Win Bitcoin

I like to write about gaming on unusual blockchains. This week we had an article about Animoca jumping onto the Hedera blockchain (see below), and we wrote about Bitcoin. Zebedee has updated its Infuse service, and now gamers can play Counter-Strike in teams using the plugin. Everybody tips in some BTC using their Lightning Wallet, and the winners takes home everything. Cool stuff! — Read more about Infuse

More NFT and gaming news

🐲 This week HodlGod sold their NFT Toy Collection — Dragon eggs!

🔵 Manchester City Dropping NFT Art with Jon Noorlander — Champions!

✨ New World and Monster Collection Comes to Nine Chronicles — On-chain gang!

🎁 My Neighbor Alice Land Sale Process Has Started — Stake ALICE for tickets

👍 VulcanVerse Upgraded Game World to Beta Status — More improvements!

⚽ Animoca Announced NFT Football Game on Hedera — With anti-cheat solution

🍀 Upcoming Tactical Game Voxies Will Get Demo Soon — Looking good really!

Upcoming events

• On Monday Space MMO Farsite will start its first crate sale. Sign up for a free ship! — This game is by the creators of MegaCryptoPolis, so expect strong economical mechanics with many layers.

• Guild of Guardians still has some guilds for sale. Go to their website and sign up to get one of those epic heroes during a later sales event. (FYI there will be a Play to Earn Community guild!)

• On Saturday Dark Country has a public land sale on the Wax blockchain. Get your land before everything sells out. The pre-sales went super fast!

• The third Play to Earn Game Festival is currently in development. We’ve got a theme, we’re building. You can mark the first week of July in your agenda, and an exact date will be announced soon.

• HodlGod will do another Genesis Toy NFT sale. This time on June 10th. You will need 10 million VOID tokens in your wallet before the snapshot happens on June 7th 11pm EST.

You can claim your PLAY rewards here. You can also join our Discord and talk with other community members about Ember Sword, Splinterlands, Sorare, Axie Infinity or other play-to-earn games.