GTA and CoD veterans’ new studio collabs with Immutable
Web3 gaming ecosystem Immutable is helping Random Games join the blockchain gaming world. The studio was founded by veteran developers and storytellers from famous franchises including Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Batman, Star Trek, The Walking Dead, Star Wars and South Park. The collaboration centers around Unioverse, a Web3 sci-fi franchise spanning multiple mediums.
Random Games plans to create a platform offering high-quality assets for game creation without royalty fees. The Unioverse community will be encouraged to produce their own stories, games and content using official assets.
Unioverse hopes to foster a continuous stream of professional and user-generated content, given its royalty-free nature. Users can monetize their creations by selling merchandise such as comic books, T-shirts and lunchboxes and retain all the profits.
Heroes from the first release in the Unioverse. (unioverse.com)
Immutable’s vice president of global business development, Andrew Sorokovsky says Immutable will provide the blockchain platform, tools and services, including its zkEVM for scaling and Immutable passport for digital IDs:
This will allow the team to focus on shipping a great game without having to become blockchain experts in the process — letting us take care of the heavy lifting,”
Unioverse features Hero NFTs, which are high-quality 3D digital items that you can own in the digital world. Hero NFTs started minting with ‘Reyu’ in Jan. 2023 and sold 20,000 NFTs, which was followed by the launch of ‘Krishah’ in June. With over a million NFTs minted and more than 110,000 verified accounts with connected wallets, they also debuted the first part of a six-part comic book series and introduced Proving Grounds, their first alpha game environment, in May.
Random Games previously raised $7.6 million in a seed funding round co-led by Resolute Ventures and Asymmetric.
Brawlers by Magic: The Gathering creator to launch on Epic Games Store
Brawlers, a player-versus-player blockchain card game will be launched on the massive, mainstream Epic Games Store.
It’s the debut game of Tyranno Studios, WAX blockchain’s inhouse game development team led by gaming industry veteran Michael Rubinelli, who has 25 years of experience at companies such as Disney, Electronic Arts and THQ.
Centered around the theme of pro-wrestling, Brawlers’ player-versus-player (PvP) mode was designed by Richard Garfield, famous for his creation of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering.
Releasing a blockchain game on EGS is a big deal for any developer, as the platform has over 230 million users, including 70 million monthly active users. But releasing a blockchain game on the platform is an even bigger deal as Web3 companies generally can’t access such a massive audience under such a reputable name. WAX’s Chief Gaming Officer Rubinelli calls EGS the “next step on our journey to the mass adoption of Web3.”
This launch further accelerates the paradigm shift in gaming as a whole, bringing blockchain-powered fairness, inclusivity and player-centric approach even closer to the mainstream audience.”
In the game, players compete in wrestling matches and earn BRWL tokens which can be used to craft or purchase content. Apart from the Brawlers themselves, every in-game item can be crafted, used, sold, traded or gifted among players as they’re NFTs.
Garfield emphasized the game’s similarity to traditional physical card games, where players can buy card sets and maintain complete control over their assets, enabling easy trading and exchange.
The game allows cross-platform functionality via NFT bridges to Polygon, Ethereum and Binance’s BNB Chain.
Over $2 billion invested in blockchain gaming so far in 2023
Blockchain gaming investments are up $600 million in the third quarter of 2023, bringing the year-to-date total to an impressive $2.3 billion in the midst of a bear market, according to DappRadar and BGA Games’ most recent joint blockchain gaming report.
Investments in Web3 gaming projects between Q3 2022 – Q3 2023. (DappRadar)
However, 2023’s tally only accounts for 30% of the preceding year’s total investments. But considering the state of the wider market, it’s a respectable figure that proves that a lot of people are willing to bet a lot of money that blockchain games will still be The Next Big Thing.
The report underscores how Web2 gaming giants are “making assertive strides into the Web3 realm.” One of the most notable being FarmVille creator Zynga’s successful introduction of Sugartown, which received instant adoption and high praise from the Web3 community. It’s a welcome development as better studios generally mean better games.
Daily unique active wallets (UAWs) saw an uptick of 12% compared to last quarter, reaching a daily average of 786,766 UAWs. Alien Worlds, a community-built metaverse, kept its crown as the most-played blockchain game of Q3 2023, capturing over 60% of WAX’s blockchain activity.
Web3 games with the highest transaction volumes for Q3 2023. (DappRadar)
Web3 gaming’s flagship titles, Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained, blazed the trail in terms of transaction volume, with volumes of $90 million and $55 million, respectively.
In the third quarter, virtual worlds experienced a dip from the last quarter’s $58 million as numbers showed $13 million in trading volume with 28,000 land sales. Despite virtual worlds’ declining trading volume, substantial investments like Animoca Brands’ $20 million funding for Mocaverse keep the metaverse fire alive.
Upland’s Spark shines on Ethereum
Metaverse platform Upland will enable trading of its in-game utility token, Spark, on Ethereum. The decision was approved by 87.25% of voters in a recent community governance vote.
Results Are In! The UIP-2 vote on the Sparklet White Paper has passed with an 87.25% YES vote!
This means the Upland Team’s proposal to move forward with the process of making Spark tradable on external exchanges has been approved by the Community. STAY TUNED for more! pic.twitter.com/cCa54KsmzD
Known as the Sparklet White Paper, the proposal was presented to the Upland community in late September. The plan involves bridging the game’s in-app token, Spark, to the Ethereum blockchain, where it will be mirrored and minted as the Sparklet token. Each Sparklet is equivalent to one-thousandth of a Spark.
Upland co-founder and co-CEO Dirk Lueth says the move is a win for decentralization:
Adhering to our mission to build the largest digital open economy, Sparklet allows us to take the next step towards progressive decentralization in a responsible way by offering tradability to our users while having mechanisms in place that can shield and protect Upland’s economy from unwanted externalities.”
A finite supply of 1,000,000,000 Sparklet tokens will be issued on Ethereum, although Upland has not shared the exact timeline yet. The Sparklet supply will be mirrored by the minting of 1,000,000 Spark on the EOS blockchain, ensuring a balanced ownership structure between the platforms.
Hot Take: Guild of Guardians
Guild of Guardians is a mobile rogue-lite squad RPG that is being developed by Mineloader and published by Immutable. It held a “friends and family demo event” this week for testing and I was one of the fortunate people that got to try the game.
As soon as the game opens, nicely composed Harry Potter-esque background music welcomes you to the world of Guardians. The demo consists of core dungeon battles, crafting loops, quests and level-up options. The graphics look decent, while the music and sound effects are on point.
Players assemble a team of heroes and venture into dungeons for combat. When assembling a team, you need to consider factional, elemental and class synergies and team composition. For instance, a team composed entirely of Hordes receives a raw attack boost, while teams of all fire elements have an increased chance of inflicting damage over time. Heroes are also split into traditional RPG roles like tank, healer, support and DPS – short for damage per second, which is used to describe damage-focused characters.
The main challenge Guild of Guardians needs to tackle is that squad-based PvP gaming has somewhat matured. None of the heroes feel original or new, and the user interface looks like every fantasy-element-bearing mobile game ever.
Guild of Guardians promotional art. (Guild of Guardians)
Of course, it’s not fair to judge such aspects by a “friends & family” demo, so it’s better to check the full version to see if there are improvements and refinements to form your own opinions — it’s going to be free-to-play anyway. Who knows, you might love it and find your next 600-hour addiction!
More from Web3 gaming space:
– Zynga’s Web3 IP Sugartown introduces an NFT collection called Oras.
– NFL Rivals announces 6-month partnership with Amazon Prime Gaming.
– Gods Unchained Season 2: Tides of Fate launches Oct. 25.
– Social web game Habbo ditches ‘Habbo NFTs’ for ‘Habbo Collectibles’ in its terminology.
– Animoca Brands subsidiary Darewise raises $3.5 million in token presale for sci-fi Web3 game Life Beyond.
– Business simulation strategy game Legacy launches on Oct. 26.
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Erhan Kahraman
Based in Istanbul, Erhan started his career as a gaming journalist. He now works as a freelance writer and content creator with a focus on cutting-edge technology and video games. He enjoys playing Elden Ring, Street Fighter 6 and Persona 5.
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of the crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system ‘frustrating’ and ‘stressed’
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for others.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
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She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.
Labour’s largest union donor, Unite, has voted to suspend Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over her role in the Birmingham bin strike row.
Members of the trade union, one of the UK’s largest, also “overwhelmingly” voted to “re-examine its relationship” with Labour over the issue.
They said Ms Rayner, who is also housing, communities and local government secretary, Birmingham Council’s leader, John Cotton, and other Labour councillors had been suspended for “bringing the union into disrepute”.
There was confusion over Ms Rayner’s membership of Unite, with her office having said she was no longer a member and resigned months ago and therefore could not be suspended.
But Unite said she was registered as a member. Parliament’s latest register of interests had her down as a member in May.
The union said an emergency motion was put to members at its policy conference in Brighton on Friday.
More on Angela Rayner
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Unite is one of the Labour Party’s largest union donors, donating £414,610 in the first quarter of 2025 – the highest amount in that period by a union, company or individual.
The union condemned Birmingham’s Labour council and the government for “attacking the bin workers”.
Mountains of rubbish have been piling up in the city since January after workers first went on strike over changes to their pay, with all-out strike action starting in March. An agreement has still not been made.
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Rat catcher tackling Birmingham’s bins problem
Ms Rayner and the councillors had their membership suspended for “effectively firing and rehiring the workers, who are striking over pay cuts of up to £8,000”, the union added.
‘Missing in action’
General secretary Sharon Graham told Sky News on Saturday morning: “Angela Rayner, who has the power to solve this dispute, has been missing in action, has not been involved, is refusing to come to the table.”
She had earlier said: “Unite is crystal clear, it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette.
“Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts.
“The disgraceful actions of the government and a so-called Labour council, is essentially fire and rehire and makes a joke of the Employment Relations Act promises.
“People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer not workers.”
Image: Piles of rubbish built up around Birmingham because of the strike over pay
Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the government’s “priority is and always has been the residents of Birmingham”.
He said the decision by Unite workers to go on strike had “caused disruption” to the city.
“We’ve worked to clean up streets and remain in close contact with the council […] as we support its recovery,” he added.
A total of 800 Unite delegates voted on the motion.
Nearly 60 Labour MPs have called on David Lammy and the Foreign Office to immediately recognise Palestine as a state.
A mix of centrist and left-wing MPs, including some committee chairs, wrote to the foreign secretary this week to say “by not recognising [Palestine] as a state, we undermine our own policy of a two-state solution and set an expectation that the status quo can continue and see the effective erasure and annexation of Palestinian territory”.
The 59 MPs suggest the government pursue five different measures to prevent the Israeli government from carrying out its Rafah plan, adding that they believed Gaza was being “ethnically cleansed” – a claim vehemently denied by Israel.
The letter was organised by Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East group.
Image: Palestinians ask for food from a charity kitchen in Gaza on 7 July. Pic: Reuters
It states that the Israeli plan, which would see the “population transfer to the southern tip of Gaza in preparation for deportation outside the strip”, is an accurate description, but that they believe a clearer way to describe it is the “ethnic cleansing of Gaza”.
Israeli officials have said they want to separate the civilian population from Hamas, which still controls parts of Gaza and holds dozens of hostages abducted in the October 7 attack that triggered the war 21 months ago.
Emmanuel Macron discussed recognising Palestine as a state at a joint news conference with Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday – the same day the letter was signed.
The French president said: “Today, working together in order to recognise the state of Palestine and to initiate this political momentum is the only path to peace.”
While France has not yet recognised a Palestinian state yet, Norway, Ireland and Spain coordinated their recognition last year.
The letter demands ministers take five different measures to:
• Recognise the state of Palestine • Continue support for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) • Secure the release of hostages • Press for the full and unhindered resumption of humanitarian aid • Fully review and place restrictions on trade with and financial support of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank
The government says it is already providing funding for the UNRWA and working to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas, but immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood will be a much more controversial move.
Sky News understands this is the second time MPs have formally called on the government to immediately recognise the state of Palestine, with previous letters signed by some parliamentary aides and even junior ministers.
Ministers have indicated their plan to recognise Palestine would be “at a time that is most conducive to the peace process” without further clarity of when that might be.
They have also indicated that it would not be suitable to speculate about future sanctions, as this could reduce their impact.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Since day one, this government has been clear that we need to see an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages cruelly detained by Hamas, better protection of civilians, much-needed food aid, medicines, shelter and other supplies immediately being allowed to enter Gaza, and a path to long-term peace and stability.
“The situation on the ground in Gaza is horrendous – for the hostages and for Palestinians – and we urgently want to see a deal done, to end the suffering on all sides.
“We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state and to doing so when will have most impact in support of a peace process. We continue to provide lifesaving aid to supporting Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and to work closely in support of the Palestinian Authority.”