Ethereum NFT model Pudgy Penguins has expanded from tokenized profile footage (PFPs) to plush toys in main retailers and past—and subsequent it’ll enter the cell gaming world through a brand new collaboration with writer Legendary Video games.
Billed as a “AAA” cell recreation, the Pudgy Penguins title is about to debut in 2025 on the Mythos Chain, a Polkadot-based gaming community that was spearheaded by Legendary Video games. The studio is the developer behind video games like NFL Rivals and Blankos Block Get together.
John Linden, co-founder and CEO at Legendary Video games, informed Decrypt’s GG that the studio had been speaking with Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz for almost a yr about making a cell gaming expertise across the burgeoning Web3 model.
“With our success with Blankos and extra just lately with NFL Rivals, which is now north of 5 million players, we felt like this was the right time,” stated Linden. “Our experiences have fine-tuned our perspective on growing mainstream video games and interesting to mainstream players, and we’re at some extent the place we’re really seeing extra robust Web3 use circumstances in mainstream video games.”
Legendary Video games is actively rebuilding the play-and-create Blankos Block Get together PC gaming expertise for cell, and Linden informed Decrypt’s GG that the identical recreation engine will probably be harnessed to energy the upcoming Pudgy Penguins recreation as properly.
Pudgy Penguins is at present constructing out its web-based Pudgy World recreation on Ethereum layer-2 scaling community zkSync. Individuals who buy Pudgy Penguins toys—that are offered at main retailers like Walmart, Goal, and Amazon—can unlock free NFT collectibles that can be utilized in Pudgy World as in-game customizations.
That mainstream crossover success for the NFT model, which yielded greater than $10 million price of gross sales for the toys in lower than a yr, is a part of why Linden thinks Pudgy Penguins is ripe for a cell recreation that may probably attain the lots.
“To me, Pudgy Penguins is a very powerful Web3 IP for mainstream utilization,” he stated. “The work they’ve finished in retail, particularly, is outstanding and rising quickly. From Amazon to now, Walmart and Goal, they’ve actually introduced their model to the lots and have created the one triple menace in Web3 to this point—NFTs, retail, and social.”
The Polkadot-powered Mythos 2.0 community is almost stay, Linden stated, amid a migration from an Ethereum Digital Machine-based method. The community now has almost 800,000 lively wallets, he stated, whereas CoinGecko information places the MYTH token within the prime 300 cryptocurrencies general by market cap.
The Mythos Basis supporting the community has lined up quite a lot of main contributors, together with Murderer’s Creed writer Ubisoft, South Korean gaming agency Com2uS, main crypto investor Animoca Manufacturers, and esports giants like FaZe Clan and Gen.G. Pudgy Penguins is the most recent to hitch the group as this recreation with Legendary takes form.
“Including Pudgy Penguins to the Basis and having the ability to ship a high-quality recreation expertise with them ought to be extremely helpful to their group, and likewise carry tens of millions extra gamers to Mythos,” Linden stated. “That is precisely the method we search for in new companions, and we consider this may develop utilization in a significant manner over the following yr, taking our wallets, transaction quantity, and gross sales quantity on Mythos to a fair greater stage.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
