Ember Sword Shuts Down After $203M NFT Hype – Another Casualty of the GameFi Crash

The Ethereum-based game “Ember Sword” is the latest in a growing wave of crypto games closing their doors.

Another well-known crypto game has come to an end. This time, it’s Ember Sword, which attracted massive attention during the metaverse land rush.

In brief:

• The Ethereum-based game Ember Sword has been shut down due to lack of funding.
• Several other crypto games have already been discontinued this year, including Nyan Heroes and Deadrop.

Four years after attracting promises of $203 million in NFT land sales, the Ethereum game Ember Sword has officially been discontinued. Developer Bright Star Studios cited a lack of funding as the reason for halting the project. This marks the latest example in the ongoing trend of crypto games shutting down.

Ultimately, we were unable to secure the funding needed to continue,

reads the announcement on the game’s official website.

We explored every possible option. But in today’s market environment—where even some of the most promising projects are shutting down—we couldn’t find a way forward.

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Ember Sword gained popularity in 2021 during the metaverse boom—around the same time Facebook rebranded to Meta. The game had completed several funding rounds, including a $2 million round that attracted investments from streamer Dr. Disrespect, The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin.

The project also brought on notable gaming industry veterans as advisors, including Rob Pardo, former Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard Entertainment and lead designer of World of Warcraft, and retired esports player Dennis “Thresh” Fong.

As interest in the metaverse soared in 2021, a virtual land rush drove expensive NFT sales in games like The Sandbox and Decentraland. At the time, Ember Sword also attracted land sale pledges worth $203 million from nearly 35,000 players—although the final amount raised appears to be significantly lower. Decrypt is still working to confirm the exact total.

Ember Sword entered closed beta in July 2024, but gameplay videos were met with a wave of disappointed comments. Later that year, the game launched in public early access after migrating to the Ethereum Layer-2 network Mantle—its second migration after a previous move from Polygon to Immutable X.

Now, the game is officially closed. Servers are offline, and access to the Discord channel is restricted. Meanwhile, the token EMBER is practically worthless—its market cap sits at just $82,000, with the token price down more than 99% from its all-time high.

This is not the ending we wanted.

reads the statement on the site.

But we sincerely thank you for being with us, for believing in this vision, and for helping Ember Sword become something unforgettable.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case, but part of a broader trend of crypto games shutting down in recent weeks.

Last week, the Solana-based shooter Nyan Heroes was also discontinued, with developer 9 Lives Interactive citing lack of funding as the reason. The game had just completed its fourth public test through the Epic Games Store, and the studio claimed it had reached over 1 million players.

On the same day, the mobile game Blast Royale also announced via Discord that it was ceasing development, although it will be released as an open-source project for other developers.

On Monday, the RPG Tatsumeeko on the Ronin network was also discontinued, with developers stating they were shifting focus to the fantasy simulator Project: Wander, hosted on Discord.

Other notable crypto game shutdowns in recent months include Deadrop and The Mystery Society, and The Walking Dead: Empires by Gala Games is also scheduled to be shut down by the end of July.