In Brief:
- Pixelmon (official site) told its Discord on Sept. 14 that it has stopped all game development, given notice to its gaming team and will take its existing titles offline.
- The decision followed a three-week test in which outside publishers spent their own marketing budgets on player acquisition and retention for Pixelmon’s games, then declined to commit to a longer deal.
- Pixelmon raised about $70 million in its February 2022 mint and $8 million in a 2024 seed round. It said refunds aren’t an option and that remaining funds will go toward a non-gaming business model.
Pixelmon is out of the games business. The project said in an announcement on its official Discord on Sept. 14 that it has ended all game development, cut its gaming team and will pull its existing titles offline while the systems behind them are dismantled.
What ended it was an audit. Over the previous three weeks, external publishers spent their own marketing budgets on Pixelmon's games and used their own tools to measure how paid campaigns brought players in and whether those players stayed. The publishers didn’t reject the games. They just didn’t see enough to make a longer-term offer, and instead asked Pixelmon to polish the product further and run another test in a few weeks.
Pixelmon raised $100M chasing the dream of becoming Crypto Pokemon
Four years later, they are abandoning video games
2021
– Pixelmon appears during peak NFT season
– promises an open-world RPG
– NFTs as playable characters
– virtual land
– play to earn
February 2022
–@StarPlatinumView on X ↗
Management said no. The team had already agreed internally that the publisher exercise, which it called an “audit of sorts,” would be the final test.
Pixelmon didn’t identify the publishers or disclose any figures for marketing spend, player acquisition or retention.
Notice went out Friday
Every member of the gaming team received notice last Friday, with severance and other benefits set by the legal requirements in their respective jurisdictions. Staff move to garden leave while the games come down.
A smaller group of senior and multidisciplinary staff stays on to look for a business model outside games. Pixelmon said a town hall Thursday will cover the possible pivots, the company’s work on AI tools and the future operating relationship between the team and the community.
No refunds
For token and NFT holders, Pixelmon ruled out community refunds. It said a refund is structurally unavailable because the company has equity shareholders, including funds and financial investors that provided capital connected with acquiring the intellectual property and moving funds out of the project’s original New Zealand entity.
Remaining funds not held in tax escrow will pay for another attempt at finding product-market fit. If that attempt fails, Pixelmon said the alternative is closing the company.
The account of the Discord announcement didn’t say what technical or commercial support, if any, the MON token or the NFT collections will get. Pixelmon’s site still lists MON as the token that powers the Pixelmon universe.
Earlier searches for a business model produced Launchpool, CollectShiny and Lexium. This one runs without a gaming operation or a Launchpool beside it.
Four games, none of them stuck
The $8 million seed round Pixelmon closed in February 2024, backed by Animoca Brands, Delphi Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Amber Group, Bing Ventures, Bitscale Capital and Cypher Capital, was meant to fund a portfolio of four titles: PixelPals, Hunting Grounds, Arena and Kevin the Adventurer. In August 2024 the project said it was preparing to show Warriors of Nova Thera and Hunting Grounds after testing with Discord members.
Kevin the Adventurer, built on Base around the ogre-like creature that became the project’s best-known asset, drew some 36,000 active players. Its players were among those eligible for the original MON airdrop, alongside holders of selected Pixelmon game NFTs, PixelPals “Farm2Farm” competitors and presale buyers.
The mint that started it
Pixelmon’s February 2022 Dutch auction pulled in roughly $70 million on the promise of an open-world RPG with NFTs as playable characters, virtual land and play-to-earn rewards. Some buyers paid 3 ETH, about $8,100 at the time.
Then came the reveal, and the artwork looked nothing like the promotional renders. Founder Syber called it a “horrible mistake.”
Kevin, the roughest of the lot, turned into the joke that outlived the project. While the Pixelmon floor sank to around 0.44 ETH, holders sold Kevins for more than 8 ETH, roughly $24,000, with some listed at 100 ETH. Coinbase later brought Kevin back during its Onchain Summer campaign as a $2 collectible on Base.
By late 2022, Web3 studio LiquidX had taken a 60% stake and installed Giulio Xiloyannis as CEO to rebuild the project around upgraded 3D art. Four years, one leadership change and an art overhaul later, the games are coming offline.
“We think we have been in this ‘not too bad but not good enough’ territory now for over 2 years,” the team said.
