Proof of Play announced it was ceasing operations Tuesday, citing an inability to build a sustainable business around its blockchain gaming thesis. The studio said it "couldn't build a product and sustainable business that proved out this thesis at scale." Its thesis centered on blockchain technology fostering a decentralized internet through games.
As part of its wind-down, Proof of Play open-sourced its intellectual property, including the Pirate Nation Unity application, the game's smart contracts and an internal agent workflow tool. All resources are published on GitHub.
The studio released its Founder Pirates NFTs, Pirate Nation artwork, intellectual property and logos under a CC0 license, which waives copyright and places the work in the public domain. The `piratenation-art` repository hosts the assets across folders for Combat Cards, Founder's Pirate NFT, Logos and Voxel Game Assets.
Game developer AzFlin said the artwork and 3D models are "a bunch of gold" for other game developers, pointing to voxel asset files containing models such as a giant squid as usable assets.
The PIRATE token traded at $0.001285 on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko data, a 10 percent increase over the preceding 24 hours. Seven-day losses stood at 11 percent. Circulating market capitalization was near $940,000, with a fully diluted valuation of approximately $1.3 million. The token has fallen 99.7 percent from its all-time high of $0.4757, set July 18, 2024, weeks after the token's launch.
The Pirate Nation Foundation, an independent entity, will continue to support the PIRATE token and plans to keep the game's website operational. Proof of Play confirmed existing "Proof of Play points" are not redeemable for value.
Proof of Play's other game, Shiba Story Go!, has been acquired by an unnamed third party and will continue to operate independently. The studio first informed its community of the shutdown via an internal channel message Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. posted by "Pirate Captain Amitt."
Proof of Play was founded by former Zynga executives and secured venture funding to develop Pirate Nation as a fully on-chain game. In 2024, it announced plans to launch a second blockchain to manage the game's transaction volume.
The shutdown follows other retrenchments across web3 gaming. Yield Guild Games previously sunseted its YGG Play publishing unit, cutting 35 jobs.
