GAM3S.GG announced the closure of a $2 million seed round led by Mechanism Capital with the participation of major Web3 venture capitals and angel investors. The fresh capital will help the platform, formerly known as Polkastarter Gaming, to scale and grow the GAM3S.GG gaming superapp into the “IGN for Web3 gaming,” as claimed by its investors.
The influx of established gaming giants is bound to light up the Web3 gaming stage. Zynga announced its Web3 game Sugartown, while Ubisoft is looking to jump on the Web3 train with its PvP tactical RPG (role-playing game) title Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles. As more players and projects are flocking into the Web3 space, the lack of quality content regarding Web3 gaming becomes more apparent.
Since accessibility is a key promise of Web3, bringing actual games and related content, such as news, guides, and other curated stories, side by side sounds like the next logical step. Web2 heavyweights like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) or Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) carried mobile gaming from a nascent industry to a massive ecosystem that generates over $90 billion annually by turning smartphone users into mobile gamers with their curated content on their respective mobile app stores.
“The gaming industry is at a crossroads,” said GAM3S.GG co-founder and CEO Omer Ghanem, adding, “While Web3 offers new exciting possibilities, the lack of quality content and a singular destination for all your Web3 gaming needs has left many gamers lost.”
Blockchain Gaming Meets Web3 Content
GAM3S.GG is a platform where direct access to over 200 games listed across 15 blockchain networks meets editorial content like news and game guides. Launched in November 2022, the platform onboarded over 60,000 users. The platform also hosted the first and the largest award show for Web3 games last December, called the GAM3 Awards, which received over 250,000 votes and was watched by 140,000 unique viewers in the live broadcast.
The team aims to use the funds from the seed round to bring in the next 100 million users to Web3 gaming by providing an all-in-one hub with GAM3S.GG superapp. This way, both newcomers and seasoned players can explore what’s going on in the Web3 space with news, guides, and other curated content from one simple screen.
Touching upon the urgency of a Web3 gaming hub, Ghanem stressed, “Traditional gaming has its IGN and Kotaku, yet the industry isn’t ready for the change that blockchain-powered titles present, and if we wait for them to step in, we would lose potential early adopters and valuable progress — and that’s why GAM3S.GG was born.”
A New Channel for Web3 Game Developers to Present Projects
The platform also provides a new channel for Web3 game developers to present their projects. Mechanism Capital Partner Ken addressed the challenges of building Web3 games, especially gaming hubs and aggregators. Ken stated, “Finding the win will require teams to take us past the feature sets we have been stuck with for years and the ability to understand incumbent playbooks and evolve them with aggressive experimentation.”
Aside from Mechanism Capital, GAM3S.GG scored backing from Polygon (MATIC-USD), Double Peak, ArkStream Capital, LD Capital, ROK Capital, Hyperithm, Snackclub, and many others for its seed round.
Shreyansh Singh, Head of Investments at Polygon, highlighted the value of platforms that offer curated content and guides. “We’ve worked closely with the [GAM3S.GG] team over the past 18 months, and investing in them isn’t just about backing a platform; it’s about championing a vision where Web3 gaming is accessible, quality games rise above the noise, and where gamers have a trusted compass in this new frontier,” Singh added.
To increase the accessibility of blockchain games, developers are working on adding new features. According to the GAM3S.GG team, user-centric features such as social logins, player-owned item management, progression rewards, and in-game progress tracking are coming to the superapp — besides the convenience of playing Web3 games available directly on the platform.
