In Brief:
- Pixelmon (official site) said on Sept. 14 that it’s stopping all game development, laying off its gaming team and taking its games offline.
- The decision followed a three-week test by outside publishers that didn’t lead to a long-term commercial deal.
- The project raised close to $70 million from its February 2022 NFT mint and $8 million more in a 2024 seed round.
Pixelmon is out of the game business.
The project told its community on Discord on Sept. 14 that it would end all game development for good. It’s laying off its gaming team, taking its titles offline and taking apart the systems behind them.
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 ↗
The decision came after outside publishers ran a three-week test of the games. The results weren’t strong enough to secure a long-term commercial deal.
“We think we have been in this ‘not too bad but not good enough’ territory now for over 2 years,” the team said in the announcement.
The final test
The publishers used their own marketing budgets and tools to measure how well the games brought in players and kept them. They didn’t reject the games outright. But retention wasn’t strong enough to justify an extended partnership.
The publishers suggested more polish and another test within weeks. Management said no.
The team said it had already agreed internally that the publisher test would be the final call. When the numbers came in short, it ended development instead of running another round.
Layoffs and what’s left
Every member of the gaming team got notice. Pixelmon said they’ll receive severance and the other benefits required where they live. Staff will go on garden leave once the games are offline and the related systems are shut down.
A smaller group of senior staff will stay on. The announcement said they’ll look into “other verticals” and business ideas that don’t depend on making games. It didn’t say what those might be.
Pixelmon said it would share more at a Thursday community town hall. That session was set to cover possible pivots, the team’s work on AI tools and how the remaining team will deal with the community going forward.
The company also said it could eventually close if no workable business model turns up.
The announcement didn’t say what support, if any, the MON token or the NFT collections will get.
Four games in the pipeline
When Pixelmon raised fresh capital in 2024, it was working on four games: PixelPals, Hunting Grounds, Arena and Kevin the Adventurer. In August 2024 it was also getting ready to show Warriors of Nova Thera and Hunting Grounds.
The $8 million seed round closed in February 2024, with backing from Animoca Brands and Delphi Ventures. LiquidX, the developer behind Pixelmon, launched MON in May 2024.
From the 2022 mint to LiquidX
Pixelmon showed up in 2021 at the height of the NFT boom. It promised an open-world RPG with NFTs as playable characters, plus virtual land and play-to-earn mechanics.
The mint went live on Feb. 7, 2022. All 8,079 public NFTs sold out within an hour, bringing in 23,055 ETH. That was worth more than $70 million at the time. The Dutch auction opened at 3 ETH, about $8,100, and the price fell slowly from there.
Buyers didn’t know what their characters would look like until the art reveal, and that reveal was widely mocked. The founder, known as Syber, called the artwork “unacceptable” and said the minted NFTs didn’t accurately show what the in-game assets would look like. Some holders started calling the project a “$70 million rug pull.”
In September 2022, the Web3 venture studio LiquidX bought a 60% stake in Pixelmon. LiquidX co-founder Giulio Xiloyannis, a former ZALORA executive, became CEO and brought in a new team and a new roadmap. About $50 million left over from the mint was moved into a multi-sig wallet. Syber is no longer involved.
A post on X by @StarPlatinum_ put the total Pixelmon raised at $100 million, saying the project was “chasing the dream of becoming Crypto Pokemon.”
As of the announcement, the Pixelmon website still described MON as “the token that powers the Pixelmon universe.”
