How Many Web3 Games Have Failed?
After the success of CryptoKitties in late 2017, play to earn (P2E) gaming became a popular crypto narrative. As a result, 422 web3 games were launched in 2018, but 307 failed in the same year.
However, GameFi development and interest slowed amid the 2019 to 2020 bear market. Only 244 web3 games were launched during these two years. At the same time, the failure rate of web3 games rose to 94.3% in 2019 and maintained at 94.2% in 2020.
2021 recorded the lowest web3 games’ failure rate of 45.9%, on the back of the crypto bull run. This was despite the number of failed web3 games jumping to 339 in 2021, surpassing 2018.
The annual number of dead web3 games more than doubled in 2022, reaching a record yearly high of 742. This also marked the highest failure rate of 107.1%, even as the number of new web3 games remained high.
In 2023 to date, 509 web3 games have failed, which is equivalent to 70.7% of the web3 games launched this year. The lower failure rate could perhaps indicate a stabilization in the state of web3 gaming.
