This was the year that, for many, the crypto gaming dream died. But that dream didn't end on its own—it was smothered by venture capitalists who stopped believing in it, and crucially, stopped investing in it.

In 2025, numerous notable crypto games shut down their operations, which Decrypt has tracked throughout the year. These closures left developers unemployed, dedicated player bases abandoned, and entire collections of digital assets rendered practically useless.

Some of these titles even promised to be forever games, claiming the power of the blockchain would keep it running indefinitely—a promise that was evidently broken.

The video game industry has faced broader struggles in recent years, including widespread layoffs, and it’d be easy to say that all of these games closed down because they simply weren’t good enough.

While we didn’t see a game with the quality (or scale) of Fortnite go offline this year, we did see some genuinely promising titles permanently halt development (see: Deadrop). The truth about crypto gaming’s existential epidemic is that venture capitalists have realized it's simply not worth their time or money.

The majority of crypto games that shut down in 2025 did so as developers pointed to a lack of funding to continue development. Elsewhere, developers stated that games had run their course, or that teams were pivoting to new ventures—mostly those outside of crypto and gaming.

“My guess is that most of them probably raised money in 2022, and this is just how long their runway has lasted,” Robby Yung, CEO of investments at venture capital firm Animoca Brands, as well as CEO of crypto game The Sandbox, told Decrypt. “Venture capital funding in gaming has been dry for years,” he added.

Several other industry experts also told Decrypt that VC funding has started to disappear, resulting in a slew of games shutting down.

Beanie, the pseudonymous founder of GM Capital, said that “all trust is gone” between investors and game makers due to a history of developers changing the terms post-investment—such as increasing the token total supply. Beanie said he’s now “more cautious” when making gaming investments.

Theodore Agranat, director of Web3 at Off the Grid maker Gunzilla Games, also said that speaking to his network of venture capitalists and crypto gaming devs, it feels like an “open” and “universal sentiment” that funding has dried up.

“That whole situation was fucked because even if you had a good VC, their [limited partners] had this… thesis that crypto companies should have twice the return in half the time of a regular fund. So they wanted these returns and had no patience,” Chris Heatherly, game industry veteran and former CEO of Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow—developer of the —told . “Towards the end of 2023, mid-2023, crypto funds stopped deploying and writing checks.”