Mythical Games has raised $16M Series A to build out its blockchain-based player-owned economies starting on a EOS blockchain
Next generation game technology studio Mythical Games has secured $16 Million in its Series-A round. The company builds IPs and a digital ecosystem around player-owned economies …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 raise is the origin point of what later became one of blockchain gaming's best-funded stories: Mythical Games took $75M Series B money in mid-2021 and then a $150M round led by a16z at a $1.25B valuation just four months later, all built on the "player-owned economies" thesis seeded here with $16M on EOS.
At the time, the bet was a bet on infrastructure as much as games — Mythical chose EOS while its closest peer, Immutable Games, raised its own $15M Series A to launch Gods Unchained on Ethereum, making chain selection an early fault line in the category.
First-order effects
- Mythical Games gets the capital to build its first titles and digital ecosystem around player-owned economies, with EOS gaining a flagship gaming use case for its ledger.
- Immutable Games' Ethereum-based Gods Unchained now has a direct well-funded rival pursuing the same player-ownership model on a competing chain.
Second-order effects
- Chain choice hardens into a competitive differentiator: EOS versus Ethereum positioning shapes which developers, wallets, and marketplaces each studio can tap for asset trading.
- Later-stage investors validate the category aggressively — a16z follows up by backing Azra Games' seed and Improbable's $150M M² round, spreading the same playable-NFT playbook across studios.
Third-order effects
- If player-owned assets become standard, game revenue shifts from selling locked-in content to taxing secondary markets for avatars and collectibles — a structural change in who captures value from in-game items.
- Capital concentration around a few blockchain gaming platforms points toward consolidation, where studios compete less on individual titles than on whose economy and chain hosts third-party creators.
The trend: Venture capital is funding a shift from publisher-controlled game content to player-owned economies, with the choice of underlying blockchain becoming a platform battleground.