Mythical Games, which is developing a game platform with “playable NFTs”, raises $150M led by a16z at a $1.25B valuation, four months after raising $75M
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Context & Ripple Effects
Mythical Games has compressed its funding arc dramatically: a $16M Series A built on EOS-backed player-owned economies in 2018 became a $75M Series B led by WestCap in June 2021, and now a $150M round just four months later. The new money comes from a16z, which is assembling a portfolio position across the same category — the related coverage shows Animoca Brands raising $88M at a $1B valuation for NFT item ownership and Big Time Studios emerging from stealth with $21M to put NFTs into studio games.
First-order effects
- Mythical Games enters its platform build-out with roughly triple the capital of its June round, letting it scale the buy-and-sell avatar economy it promised WestCap investors while rivals are still at seed or early growth stage.
- a16z's lead marks a shift from Mythical's earlier backers toward a fund already positioned across NFT gaming infrastructure, tightening the capital concentration at the top of the category.
Second-order effects
- Animoca Brands, whose $1B valuation set the benchmark five months earlier, now faces a direct competitor valued higher with deeper pockets — forcing both to compete for the same game studios deciding whether to embed player-owned economies.
- Studios evaluating NFT integration gain leverage as funded platforms like Mythical and Big Time Studios bid for their inventory, turning what was an experiment into a supplier market with real pricing power.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — three unicorns-plus funded in one year for player-owned asset layers — game distribution starts splitting between closed-economy incumbents and open-asset platforms, with secondary-market royalties becoming a structural revenue line rather than a novelty.
The trend: Venture capital is rapidly consolidating around blockchain gaming infrastructure, with successive mega-rounds turning playable-NFT platforms from experiments into capitalized category leaders.