This past week we saw a major market downturn with the continued fallout from the collapse of FTX. And all signs point to further turmoil in the crypto space before this saga is done. And while all the web3 and play-to-earn games developers were quick to speak up and say that they would continue working on their projects, the effects were felt by everyone.
In somewhat sad news, Splinterlands just announced a layoff for 45% of their staff! And they aren’t the only ones affected by the drop in token value. Other companies have made some cuts, often to the PR and marketing departments.
But, there is still plenty of activity in the web3 gaming space! Chainmonsters opens their Foundation land sale, Superior launches early access for their game on Steam, Gods Unchained begins migrating cosmetic items to IMX, and Axes: Battleground makes their official launch, with prizes for the top 100 players on the leaderboard!
Let’s check in on the most active web3 games and NFT projects and see how they’re doing this week.
Top play-to-earn games by active users
| Game | Active Users 7 days | Change |
| 1. Alien Worlds | 339.8k | -28.79% |
| 2. Splinterlands | 258k | -3.7% |
| 3. Benji Bananas | 86.29k | -37.65% |
| 4. Farmers World | 86.29k | -4.21% |
| 5. Upland | 81.46k | +2.89% |
| 6. Trickshot Blitz | 59.71k | -44.72% |
| 7. Ultimate Champions | 57.2k | +295% |
| 8. Axie Infinity | 44.68k | -8.16% |
| 9. Era7: Game of Truth | 42.98k | +12.33% |
| 10. Arc8 by GAMEE | 42.31k | -3.95% |
This week continued to see general turmoil and a bleeding of active users from the markets. Most of the top 10 projects from last week took a hit, making room in the bottom few spots for some games we’ve seen here before push their way back up. And it was also a chance for a newcomer, Ultimate Champions, a free to play fantasy football game based on Polygon, to make its debut.
We have a lot of next tier quality games moving into alpha phases. It will be interesting to see if they can make their way to the top of the charts once they launch a stable, ongoing game.
Top 10 NFT collections by volume traded
| Collection | Volume traded 7 days | Volume Change |
| 1. Bored Ape Yacht Club | $10.11M | -13.19% |
| 2. Mutant Ape Yacht Club | $4.83M | +26.72% |
| 3. CryptoPunks | $4.66M | -16.38% |
| 4. Otherdeed for Otherside | $4.44M | +5.72% |
| 5. y00ts | $3.39M | -8.41% |
| 6. Gods Unchained | $2.74M | -24.09% |
| 7. Art Blocks | $2.44M | -45.95% |
| 8. Clone X – X Takashi Murakami | $1.61M | -7.67% |
| 9. DeGods | $1.57M | -45.5% |
| 10. RarePass: Genesis | $1.49M | +100% (new) |
Many NFT collections also took a hit to trading volume this week.
But the BAYC and its associated collections remained strong. Despite a 13% drop in trading volume, Bored Ape Yacht Club holds on to the top spot. And it’s offshoot projects, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherside both saw bumps this week to put them into the top 5.
It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that investing in NFTs was a sure bet, and a good hedge when token prices dropped. But, aside from a few projects, NFT collections are not the safe haven they once were. And like many new web3 games, some new NFT projects have a big spotlight on them at first mint, that quickly fades away.
Gods Unchained saw a significant hit this week as well. If they can finish up their cosmetics migration soon, it may help provide a trading volume boost for this web3 TCG.
