Limit Break, Inc. has announced that it has raised $200 million in investment capital from venture capitalists based on a concept called “free-to-own” Web3 gaming.
Limit Break, a blockchain games-centric company, announced that it had raised $200 million from venture capitalists based on a concept called “free-to-own” Web3 gaming. Buckley Ventures, Standard Crypto, and Paradigm Ventures led two funding rounds. Coinbase, Anthos Capital, SV Angel, Shervin Pishevar, and FTX also participated in the fundraiser.
The company was founded by Gabriel Leydon and Halbert Nakagawa, pioneers of the “free-to-play” mobile gaming model. However, they are presumably taking a different route with Limit Break in efforts to revolutionize Web3 gaming.
“Free-to-Play gaming is ending,” said Leydon, “and Limit Break is coming to replace it.”
Leydon and Nakagawa also founded Machine Zone, which gamers most likely remember for its splashy advertising that featured celebrities like Kate Upton, Arnold Schwarzenneger, and Mariah Carey. Machine Zone is the brains behind top-grossing mobile gaming titles “Game of War,” “Mobile Strike,” and “Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire.”
Leydon first broke into the gaming industry as a game tester back in the 90s. He built Limit Break through his vision for fun, interactive Web3 gaming. He also seeks to fill a significant void in that nascent space.
“People talk about Web3 gaming like a futuristic inevitability,” says Leydon, “It’s not. It requires people to properly design and build it. And those people work at Limit Break.”
Followers of NFT Twitter are probably also familiar with Leydon, who has lately been active on Twitter, where he has criticized Web3 gaming approaches of other companies while lauding his own.
$200M Web3 Gaming Funds
Limit Break, whose name is from the iconic RPG series “Final Fantasy,” became a household name for the DigiDaigaku NFT collection. The same NFT collection was offered to the public, totally free of charge. Moreover, Limit Break’s official Twitter account says the DigiDaigaku NFT collection was stealth-minted. It means the NFT drop happened without the project team announcing it.
Currently, the lowest-priced DigiDaigaku NFT is Ξ 13.5 or about $21,080. However, the collection’s floor price has declined steadily after reaching a high of Ξ 15. Leydon says the Limit Break team is holding an airdrop on Friday for DigiDaigaku NFT holders.
Through the $200 million funding round, Leydon is bullish that the new direction Limit Break is treading—towards Web3 gaming—will lead the entire gaming industry into a new era.
“We have the perfect partners, perfect investors, and perfect team in place to bring the gaming industry into a new era,” announced Leydon.
Limit Break expects “free mint games” to replace the IPO-style fundraising that ruled the NFT space in 2021 and allowed game creators to sell parts of future “play-to-earn” titles for hundreds of millions of dollars. “This model doesn’t work,” explained Leydon, “but our Free-to-Own model will.”
The “free-to-own” model is a relatively new concept that rewards early NFT collectors for participating in the game’s development instead of treating them like customers. Teams create the basis for games on free mints or airdrops, with other ways of making money introduced later.
Limit Break sees the launch of DigiDaigaku as an opportunity to transition play-to-earn and free-to-play gaming models to free-to-own. Per Leydon, the limited play-to-earn games that become successful eventually morph into “play-to-sell.” That’s because the player-investors start crashing markets and dumping the increasingly worthless NFTs and cryptocurrencies that used to hold the carefully-planned economies together.
Hopefully, DigiDaigaku could turn things around and spark a new meta in Web3 gaming, assuming it is setting a pattern that other teams can “easily copy.” However, funding is a significant issue that puts other teams at a disadvantage since venture capitalist money in the NFT space is still relatively new.
Such will not be a problem for Limit Break since its vault has $200 million from which it can draw from.
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