Key takeaways:
- French mobile gaming unicorn Voodoo will be investing $200 million in blockchain gaming project in 2022
- The company will provide its hardware and software solutions to blockchain gaming developers and help monetize their projects
- The GameFi sector has been experiencing tremendous growth this year – three out of the top five largest YTD gainers in the crypto top 100 belong to the blockchain gaming sector
Voodoo, a French mobile game developer with backing from investment banking giant Goldman Sachs and Chinese tech giant Tencent, has unveiled its plans to invest $200 million in companies making blockchain-powered video games throughout 2022.
Voodoo CEO believes blockchain tech will disrupt the gaming industry
The blockchain gaming sector has been receiving huge amounts of attention lately – not only have the value of numerous gaming tokens skyrocketed in recent months, but the industry is also on the receiving end of massive institutional investments.
The latest company to announce its foray into crypto gaming is the French unicorn Voodo, a mobile game developing studio. According to Voodoo’s blog post, the company will be providing a testing ground platform where developers can “build, test, and launch games.” Additionally, the company will help blockchain gaming publishers in building a customized product strategy and provide software and hardware tools to support “the game creation process.”
Voodoo has launched more than 100 games since its inception in 2013, with the most successful title being Helix Jump, which has been downloaded more than 500 million times on iOS and Android devices.
Alex Yazdi, the CEO of Voodoo, talks about the long-term prospects of blockchain technology in gaming:
“Blockchain will especially disrupt gaming, as players are already used to buying digital assets. This technology will give players true ownership of their digital assets, creating deeper interactions between players – collecting, trading, selling in-game digital currencies and game assets – which will increase fun and engagement.”
The exponential growth of the crypto gaming sector has been fueled mostly by new monetization mechanics (such as Play-to-Earn), and the excitement surrounding various metaverse developing projects. For reference, three out of the top five largest year-to-date (YTD) gainers in the crypto top 100, GALA, AXS, and SAND belong to the blockchain gaming sector.
Voodoo is far from being the only company investing in the rapidly growing GameFi sector. Earlier in the week, Solana Ventures announced a $150 million fund designed to back gaming startups building on the Solana blockchain. Last week, Ubisoft became the first major gaming company to implement NFTs directly into one of its flagship games, using Tezos blockchain to power its native Ubisoft Quartz NFTs.
